The biggest challenge we face now is the limited awareness of ecological practices and lack of land for smallholders. We are very much against the current push for hybrids and GMOs and the dependence that comes with them. Thus we call upon our government to declare Tanzania free of such...

Northern Uganda is home to 20 per cent of Uganda's entire population, but it accounts for 38 per cent of Uganda's poorest. The Acholi sub-region and Adjumani district have suffered more from recent internal conflicts than other areas in the north. Living in the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps has...

Success stories from the FAO Food Security through Commercialization of Agriculture (FSCA) Programme funded by the Italian Development Cooperation in Eastern Africa. Supporting market oriented production and value addition. Facilitating business linkages and access to fair markets. Promoting efficiency and professionalization of value chain actors.

Due to this underlying need, FAO, in collaboration with ICRISAT, ICARDA, and CIAT, organized an expert consultation workshop in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in December 2013 on Community Seed Production. The workshop’s objective was to create a roadmap and develop strategies for enhancing effective uptake and implementation of CSP in developing...

Household mentoring is an innovative tool that provides the skills and knowledge that enable poor families to improve their well-being and incomes. And, as an IFAD-supported programme in Uganda has shown, it also promotes greater equality and shared decision-making among household members.

Representatives of African countries and development partners commemorated the 6th Africa Day of Food and Nutrition Security, sounding a strong call for investments in nutrition sensitive agriculture. The call was emphasized among key recommendations made by technical stakeholders who met in Kampala two days ahead of the 6th ADFNs commemoration....

How many households keep livestock in rural and urban areas? What are their major production and husbandry practices, and their constraints to increase livestock productivity? This infographic presents an analysis of one of the largest datasets on livestock at household level available throughout sub-Saharan Africa: the Uganda 2011/12 National Panel...

The data revolution must address three major challenges in order to contribute to sustainable development: increasing the quantity and quality of data; making the data usable; and ensuring their use by decision-makers. This infographic shows how the data revolution can be mobilized, with an example from the livestock sector. In collaboration...

This article investigates gender inequality in agricultural productivity, highlights its key determinants, and approximates the potential production, consumption, and poverty gains from reducing or closing the gender productivity gap. The analysis is performed on the basis of representative household survey datasets recently collected in Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda. In these...

Market participation by smallholder farmers has the potential to pull farmers out of poverty while at the same time increasing food security at the more aggregate level. This paper looks at the dynamics of smallholder maize and beans marketing in Uganda and Mozambique. Using panel data from both countries, we...

ASARECA has been praised for providing mechanisms and technical backstopping for regional centres of excellence to work together and share technologies, Innovations and Management Practices during EAAPP Phase 1.

FAO and Gayaza High School in Uganda are working together to develop opportunities for students to learn and acquire agricultural skills while eating healthier and nutritious food. A FAO project to help the high school acquire production input and facilities is showing promising results. Through the project, a greenhouse for...

Women play a critical role in every link of the value chain in small-scale fisheries, although their best-known roles are in processing and marketing of fish and other fishery products. This perception of the highly gender-segregated division of labour (men fishing / women processing) has shaped the generalized approach in...

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...