Drought-tolerant corn offers Uganda's farmers a lifeline

Josephine Nansamba loves her bazooka.

As a corn farmer in Kabende, Uganda, she knows what it’s like to see her income dry up alongside her crops. But the last few years have been different, she says, thanks to a new variety of drought-tolerant corn known as bazooka. Today, despite drawn-out spells of drought that have claimed her neighbors’ crops, her bazooka is sturdy, tall, and a flourishing green.  

Ms. Nansamba’s bazooka is one of several newly developed, hybrid strains of corn sprouting in Ugandan fields. Farmers,