Between 2008 and 2013 ASARECA coordinated and provided leadership in implementing a project called “Dissemination of New Agricultural Technologies in Africa” (DONATA) across 6 countries in eastern and central Africa. The approach in DONATA was the innovation platform for technology adoption (IPTA). At the start of the project, there were...

The EMPRES-i Event Mobile Application (EMA) allows national veterinary authorities to use smartphones to report disease outbreaks. It also allows district veterinary officers to access disease reports submitted by colleagues. During the second half of 2013, the app was tested in a pilot which took place in ten districts of...

The soybean value chain has a potential to increase smallholder farmers’ incomes and has significant growth potential yet soybean farming households lack services such as education which is tailored to address the real challenges they face in maximizing profits from farming. There is thus a need to integrate entrepreneurship training....

Producer organizations (PO) can improve market access, lower transaction costs and increase the profits of smallholder farmers by offsetting diseconomies of scale (Heyer et al., 1999; Hill et al., 2008; The World Bank, 2008). Yet, evidence for Sub-Saharan Africa shows that POs often fail to attain these objectives. Instead of...

Efforts were undertaken through the auspices of a collaborative project “Strengthening Universities Capacities for Mitigating Climate Induced Change Water Vulnerability – WATERCAP” to address a key challenge of water scarcity in dryland areas of Uganda. A multisciplinary team engaged since 2009 has through implementation of this project observed the constraints...

More than 500 million family farms dominate agriculture around the world ensuring food security and providing employment to hundreds of millions of people. Family farms are also essential in safeguarding agro-biodiversity, and sustaining communities and cultures. However, family farming faces numerous challenges including insecure land rights, and limited access to...

Smallholder potato farmers in Uganda face many production and marketing challenges including limited access to markets and low surpluses for sale into the market. This study sought to underscore the factors that influence smallholder farmers’ decision to participate in the potato market and level of participation in such markets. Data...

This technology describes utilizing rooftop water harvesting facilities to increase the availability of water for domestic use and irrigation of backyard tomato gardens. This measure allows small-scale farmers to harvest rainwater from roofs and store it in tanks, ensuring tomato production also during the dry season, when it would be otherwise...

The Platform for Agricultural Risk Management (PARM) is an initiative focused on making risk management an integral part of policy planning and implementation in the agricultural sector in developing countries. The overall objective of PARM is to contribute to sustainable agricultural growth, reduce food insecurity, and improve livelihoods of rural and...

The warehouse receipt system for maize (Zea mays L.) was introduced in Uganda to enhance farmer access to markets and credit in order to increase the efficiency of the maize value chain and to improve smallholder incomes. Though, since the inception of the warehouse receipt system in Uganda, there has...

Junior Farmer Field and Life Schools (JFFLS) are a simple methodology for teaching vulnerable children and young people about farming, entrepreneurial skills and how to take care of themselves. These schools follow a “living classroom” approach in which the students or children out of school observe the crops throughout the...

Interviewed onsite at The Economist Feeding the World Summit 2014, Rose Akaki tells Farming First the key challenges faced by female farmers in Uganda and offers her recommendations for improving agriculture in her country.

Smallholder agriculture in many developing countries has remained largely self-financed. However, improved productivity for attaining greater food security requires better access to institutional credit. Past efforts to extend institutional credit to smaller farmers has failed for several reasons, including subsidized operation of government-aided credit schemes. Thus, recent efforts to expand...

Conventional wisdom holds that Sub-Saharan African farmers use few modern inputs despite the fact that most growth-inducing and poverty-reducing agricultural growth in the region is expected to come largely from expanded use of inputs that embody improved technologies, particularly improved seed, fertilizers and other agro-chemicals, machinery, and irrigation. Yet following...

Uganda’s landscape is dominated by Small scale farmers who maintain trees on-farm to satisfy their basic needs. On-farm trees contribute to reduction of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and in this way contribute climate change mitigation. It has been observed that some farms are not managing trees appropriately. In order...

It is important that any international investment should bring development benefits to the receiving country in terms of technology transfer, employment creation, upstream and downstream linkages and so on if these investments are to be “win-win” rather than “neo-colonialism”. These beneficial flows are not automatic: care must be taken in...

The climate of Uganda is regarded as its most valuable natural resource, and a major determinant of other natural resources, such as water, forests, and wildlife, as well as human activities based on these resources, such as agriculture and ecotourism (Republic of Uganda, MWE 2007). Together these resources provide the...

In surveys conducted by the Organisation for Rural Development (ORUDE) from 2010 - 2012, maize stood out as the second most important food and cash crop in Busoga after sweet potatoes. Due to climate change, farmers desired to have drought-tolerant seed varieties, However, lack of formalized maize seed supply systems...

Ankole Longhorn cattle can survive in extremely harsh, dry conditions such as those in Sub-Saharan Africa – which is becoming drier and hotter. In a context where herders are strongly encouraged to keep exotic and hybrid cattle, the innovative LIFE approach led Ugandan herders to revalue the Longhorns for their...

The study was initiated to understand how asset building, combined with appropriate extension services, can enable smallholder farmers to address marketing problems. Interviews were conducted in 2009 with 317 farm households in Kamuli district, Eastern Uganda, who were participants in a sustainable rural livelihoods program, led by an indigenous nongovernmental...