Effects of increasing prices of food commodities on people’s standards of living: a case study of Kawempe Division, Kampala District

Abstract

The main topic of this study was "effects of increasing prices of food commodities on people's standards of living in Bwaise parish, Kawempe division. The study also had four specific objectives which were; to find out the food vendors' perception about the purchasing power, to establish how the cost of fuel affects production of different types of food commodities, to establish how changes in climatic seasons affect food supply and to establish how people are able to cope up with the situation. The study population was made up of households in Bwaise parish found in Kawempe division. Simple random sampling technique was used to select 100 households from around Bwaise parish. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected from the field and later processed for analysis. The study findings revealed that; variance of analysis (ANOVA) results showed that the changes in seasons and cost of fuel on production of different types of food commodities had a significant effect on food prices in Bwaise parish, Kawempe division at a 5% level of significance since the p-value is less than 0.05. The regression results in table 7 showed a statistically significant negative relationship at a 5% level of significance between transport costs and people's standards of living since its p-value is less than 0.05. Regression results in table 7 showed a statistically significant positive relationship at a 5% level of significance between production costs and people's standards of living in this study since its p-value is less than 0.05. The study concludes that the urban poor together with food deficit famers are the worst affected by food price inflation because they only rely on food purchases for their food supply. The study further recommends that there is need to protect famers and traders from being exploited under informal trade arrangement, by forming cooperatives to bargain for favorable food prices, and encourage agro-based industries to add value on agricultural produce in order to attain high or better prices.