Uganda

A training on enhancing stakeholder participation in the Uganda National Forestry Program was held from from 26 - 30 April 2010 at the Nyabyeya Forestry College involving participants from eight districts in Uganda. The workshop was organized as a response to the recognition that in spite of its well defined objectives and in spite of the centrality of the forestry sector to national development aspirations, little progress had been made regarding sustainable forest management through the nfp process. A key reason for the little progress in implementation was cited as the weak or non participation of stakeholders in the NFP implementation. The above was particularly significant considering the diverse nature of forest sector stakeholder groups in the country. These include (forest timber and none timber resource users, forest producers, public institutions and processors), enabling agencies (Government Ministries, local Governments and Donors and the global community. Others include service delivery agencies such as (National Forestry Authority, Uganda Wildlife Authority, Training and Research Institutions and NGOs). 

The workshop was organised at a time when the National Forest Plan was under review. It therefore offered the opportunity for a broad number of people, the workshop participants, to share their views and perspectives on the plan under review. The training was facilitated by Dr Wilson Kasolo and Joseph Ssuuna, who are FAO-trained facilitators . They were therefore well exposed to the training process and organisation. In order to situate the training within the national forestry processes the training proposal was presented to the multi stakeholder steering committee who adopted it.

The Uganda Forest Working Group further agreed that the enhancing stakeholder participation workshop be utilised as an opportunity to get the stakeholders to contribute to the ongoing NFP review process. As a consequence, CADMA consult the firm that is leading the NFP review process were invited to make a presentation of the review process to the participants and to seek their views and input on the review process.

The training, the first of its kind in the country enabled the participants to assess the extent to which each stakeholder's impact on, contribute to, and are affected by forest sector policies, initiatives and activities. The workshop exposed the participants to the principles of National forest programmes and the tools and methods for enhancing participation as well as affording them space to experiment with these methods.

As a consequence the need and importance of facilitating wider participation of stakeholders in the development and implementation of the National Forestry policies and plans were underscored.

The workshop generated plenty of information on possible interventions that could be undertaken to enhance stakeholder participation in NFP. This information was subsequently used to design an action plan as a major outcome from the workshop.

Training outputs included:

• Bringing together various forest stakeholders and enabling them to freely engage one another.
• Stakeholders were subsequently able to identify current gaps in achieving the goals of the NFP.
• They agreed on strategies for enhancing stakeholder participation at the various levels and these were formulated into the action plan that forms a large part of this report.
• Participants were able to participate in the ongoing NFP review process.