The food insecurity in Karamoja is visible in many ways, malnutrition among children, growth abnormalities and the scores of people begging to survive. Begging is wide-spread that there is a common greeting in Karamoja called Akollo which means am hungry please feed me. The lack of food in the region has seen many organizations coming into play to nourish the locals. During food distributions, numerous beneficiaries flood the outposts; children, mothers and the elderly lining up to get their entitlements. but first, they have to go through screening by nutritionists which are sometimes a lengthy process. Once the screening is done, the beneficiaries are served their rations and this comes with chaos and sometimes it's not just chaos, people fight.

"We need the right approaches to develop Karamoja, we need to stop believing on the handouts, we need to advocate for things that will work for us. Because to my own view now, the way we have been seeing the policies which have been made for Karamoja are not working." "Whenever you say you have unemployment you talk of Karamoja, you talk of illiteracy you talk of Karamoja as an example, whenever you talk of poverty you talk of Karamoja as an example." "It is taken as a dry area but the area has a lot of water when it comes to a rainy season the amount of water they have; if it was to be harvested."
Makerere University Professor Dennis Mpairwe at the department of agricultural production said his team was working on something for Karamoja. "One of the things we did in Karamoja was to go and identify their native species which they have, which have been supporting them, and those ones are which have gone through the building programs of citizen scientists like in NARO and also with Makerere.” However, he said people must be sensitized. “So if people can be sensitized on food production and having their own food other than depending on what is coming from outside as aid then you solve the problem of Karamoja in terms of food security.”

The Woman MP for Nakapiripiriti district Esther Anyakun said the food aid was helpful. “Even me I survived on food aid, we wouldn’t go to school without a plate. When there is no food at school it’s like a holiday.” But she cautions the locals on over dependence. “We have Operation Wealth Creation, I request that they put a lot of energy so that we stop begging from the aid USAID and so forth to come and supply the people of Karamoja and give them free handouts.” Anyakun however, was worried by the way government executes its interventions. “Because if I don’t want cassava, why should you bring cassava to my garden?” Anyakun believes that Karamoja is the future food basket for Uganda. “Karamoja is a very potential area, as we talk, we have a lot of virgin lands which has never been exploited.”