African agriculture is currently at a crossroads, at which persistent food shortages are compounded by threats from climate change. But, as this book argues, Africa can feed itself in a generation and help contribute to global food security. To achieve this Africa has to define agriculture as a force in economic growth by: advancing scientific and technological research; investing in infrastructure; fostering higher technical training; and creating regional markets.
As the name suggests, the original aim of the Rural Knowledge Network (RKN) was to make more information available specifically about markets, to smallholder farmers. The core idea was to provide information to farmers and traders about current market prices in different markets around the country. This was done by building a network of entrepreneurs who regularly collected the price information and sent it to a central collecting Internet platform facility.
Grants for agricultural innovation are common but grant funds specifically targeted to smallholder farmers remain relatively rare. Nevertheless, they are receiving increasing recognition as a promising venue for agricultural innovation. They stimulate smallholders to experiment with improved practices, to become proactive and to engage with research and extension providers. The systematic review covered three modalities of disbursing these grants to smallholder farmers and their organisations: vouchers, competitive grants and farmer-led innovation support funds.
Uganda pioneered the use of budget support operations known as Poverty Reduction Support Credits (PRSCs) in the World Bank. PRSCs were designed to channel programmatic lending to support policy and institutional reforms in support of a country's Poverty Reduction Strategy, usually presented in the form of a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). In the case of Uganda the PRSCs were designed as a series of annual credits supporting a three year rolling program of reforms, based on Uganda's version of a PRSC, which is known as the Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP) .
At an average above 6.0 percent per year over the past two decades, Uganda' s growth rate was impressive by all standards. In parallel, poverty declined significantly, not only in urban areas, but also to some extent within the rural areas. This combination was possible because the key drivers of growth were labor-intensive services sectors, some of which are agriculture based. In fact, Uganda's growth process has reduced overall poverty faster than what has been observed in many other developing countries.
Between 2012 and 2016, in collaboration with research and development partners, ILRI undertook specific action research and capacity development interventions to address identified challenges and generate evidence for wider applicability along the pig value chain. The work was funded by three major bilateral donors, the European Commission/International Fund for Agricultural Development (EC/IFAD) and Irish Aid.
Cassava is an important source of food and income in Uganda. However, it cannot be marketed over a long time and distance thereby reducing incomes to growers and traders, leading to less investments and hence low productivity. This report describes the capacity building process and training activities that were done to enable the value chain actors adopt and adapt the pre-and post-harvest practices, and waxing and high relative humidity storage technologies in order to run a successful business enterprise .
Cassava is an important source of food and income in Uganda. However, it cannot be marketed over a long time and distance, thereby reducing incomes and food security to growers, consumers and traders. This in turn leads to less investments and hence low productivity. To address this challenge, the project of Extending the Shelf life of Fresh Cassava Roots for Increased Incomes and Postharvest Loss Reduction proposed to set up two packhouses in order to test their commercial viability.
This report highlights the outcome of the Business and Enterprise training workshop conducted for pig farmers under the Kyanamukaaka-Kabonera pig cooperative in Masaka district. The training took place from 26th to 28th August 2015 at St.Paul Primary School in Bukunda, Masaka district. The report contains information about workshop preparations, objectives, methodology, key events of the training, participants’ evaluation of the workshop, summary of conclusion and recommendations. The training team comprised of Enterprise Uganda staff; Daniel Joloba and Sarah Akiteng.
The organization of the Nutrition Innovation Labs represents a novel model for focusing U.S.- supported research on food and nutrition issues in developing countries. Their aims are to discover how policy and program interventions can most effectively achieve large-scale improvements in maternal and child nutrition, particularly by leveraging agriculture and build human and institutional capacity for applied policy analysis, research and program implementation.