Uganda, often referred to as the "Pearl of Africa," boasts abundant natural resources, a tropical climate, rich soils, and well-distributed rainfall, creating an ideal environment for its agricultural sector. Agriculture is the backbone of the Ugandan economy, employing 70% of the population, and contributing half of Uganda’s export earnings and a quarter of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). Despite these natural advantages, over 20% of the population still live below the poverty line. Although subsistence farming currently dominates agriculture in Uganda, the sector has great potential to drive major economic growth and lift millions of people out of poverty.
Women farmers in Uganda. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Challenges and Opportunities in Ugandan Agriculture
Ugandan agriculture faces several systemic inefficiencies that particularly impact smallholder farmers, including women, youth, and persons with disabilities (PWDs), leaving them vulnerable to poverty and food insecurity. These farmers are grappling with limited access to affordable, quality inputs such as climate-smart seeds, fertilizers, agrochemicals and industrial tools. Financial exclusion compounds these challenges, as many farmers cannot access the microfinance credit necessary for investing in agricultural inputs, with women and PWDs particularly disadvantaged in agriculture-related businesses within local markets. Coupled with reliance on rain-fed agriculture, these factors worsen food insecurity during dry seasons due to water shortages. These challenges underscore the urgent need for transformative and sustainable change to alleviate entrenched poverty, food insecurity, and climate vulnerability in the region.
Despite these challenges, Ugandan agriculture has enormous potential to transform the economy and make farming much more productive and profitable for Ugandan smallholder farmers. In stark opposition to supply-side constraints, demand-side opportunities for agriculture and food for Uganda and its neighbors are the strongest they have ever been, according to the report. Booming domestic and regional demand for higher-value foods arising from income growth, urbanization, and dietary shifts offer massive opportunities for Ugandan farmers, the report says, and for value chains beyond farm production, and better jobs in agriculture. Other areas of potential identified by the report are developments in agricultural technology and ICT, and various successful agribusiness models that could be upscaled.
Innovative Approaches to Farming
Several organizations are working to improve farming techniques and livelihoods in Uganda. Farm Africa helps rural communities in Uganda to increase their incomes and resilience to climate change by building environmentally friendly, inclusive and sustainable farming businesses. Farm Africa supports female and young farmers in Uganda to gain access to knowledge and information on production; markets and finance; and productive resources such as land. Farm Africa helps smallholder farmers in Uganda to build their entrepreneurial skills.
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In Uganda’s Karamoja region, Farm Africa is partnering with CARE International and local organisations to enhance climate resilience, food security and incomes of pastoralist communities, with a particular focus on women and young people. The project supports groups of farmers, each guided by a trained Village Based-Advisor (VBA), in climate-smart agriculture, vegetable production and post-harvest handling of their crops. Demonstration gardens are established to grow high-value vegetables and leafy greens and show irrigation innovations that maximise water retention and access to water. Farmers also receive solar-powered irrigation kits, treadle pumps and seeds. As part of the project, farmers are linked to agro-input providers who supply high-quality seeds and agrochemicals, and are connected to buyers for their produce. This enables them to sell vegetables to neighbouring and local markets, restaurants and hotels.
Farm Africa is training 100 village-based advisors, most of whom are women, and 30 district agricultural officers, to provide extension services to smallholder farmers. These services include climate-smart agriculture, gender training and digital tools such as mobile text messaging to provide advice and support.
Gordon’s Agricultural Organisation-Uganda (GAO-UG) is a social enterprise aiming to address the systemic challenges faced by smallholder farmers in Northern Uganda. To effect meaningful change, GAO-UG employs a bundled service delivery model that encompasses last- mile agricultural inputs delivery, advisory services, irrigation solutions, microfinance credit, and market access facilitation. Through strategic partnerships with local government entities and organisations like Mukwano group of company, Technoserve, Self Help Africa, Governance system international, E4impact Foundation, Tulima Solar Company, Uganda Forum for Agricultural forum for Agricultural Advisory (UFAAS) and Italian Agency for Development Cooperation, GAO-UG has rolled out capacity-building programmes focused on agronomy, modern farming techniques, crop and soil nutrition, pest and disease management and climate-resilient practices.
At the community level, GAO-UG has directly supported over 25,103 smallholder farmers, including 17,573 women, 7,530 men, and more than 50 PWDs. These farmers have benefited from increased access to quality seeds, extension services, microfinance credit, and reliable market linkages. GAO-UG has also recruited and trained over 50 CAPs who support last-mile delivery of products and services who now earn an average of UGX 200,000 (USD 50-60) per month, enhancing rural employment and self-reliance. Notably, each season, participating farmers cultivate high-value crops such as maize, sunflower, soybeans, and others across 2-3 acres, collectively generating an estimated $3.49 million USD in total value added to the local economy. The frontline service providers also known as CAPs, are often recruited from the same communities they serve, which strengthens trust and local engagement.
At the national level, GAO-UG business model aligns seamlessly with Uganda’s development goals, focusing on agricultural commercialisation, youth employment, and climate-smart agriculture. The construction of 257 hand-dug wells and 250 solar-powered water irrigation systems has mitigated water scarcity, enabling year-round agricultural production in the region.
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To reinforce its commitment to reforestation, every farmer the organisation works with is encouraged to plant at least ten sheanut or other indigenous trees per season or protect those already existing on their farmland.
TechnoServe has been working in Uganda with farmers, cooperatives, suppliers, and processors to strategically develop competitive industries around key agricultural markets, including dairy, coffee, horticulture, and staples such as maize and beans. We help farmers improve agricultural practices, assist producer organizations to strengthen operations, and identify opportunities for investment in agriculture. Additionally, we support the diversification of Uganda’s economy through entrepreneurship programs that empower young men and women to create thriving businesses.
Project Nurture, a partnership with The Coca-Cola Company and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, aimed to help more than 50,000 small-scale mango and passion fruit farmers in Kenya and Uganda double their fruit incomes. TechnoServe and its partners worked with farmers to identify new market opportunities, improve productivity and develop strong farmer business groups.
Examples of Successful Implementations
In the last few years, Henry Kalumba, a smallholder farmer in Kkanya village, located in Central Uganda’s Mityana District, began noticing a change of color in his farm’s soil. Instead of its usual dark brown, the soil had become yellowish, an indicator of low nutrients. The texture was slowly becoming cracked, dry, and dusty. With every month, more farms in the community saw the same decline.
Having no other option but to adapt, Kalumba and other community members joined forces to integrate agroecological practices into their farms. This method prevents the soils from turning into a desert, a process fueled by climate change. Agroecology is a production system that considers the interaction between plants and animals, diversifies crops on farms, regenerates soils, and uses organic fertilizers in food systems. So far, around 30 household smallholder farms in Kkanya have adapted their production to agroecology, as it has proven to be efficient, cost-effective, and affordable for farmers. “We are now growing and maintaining food forests, not gardens.’’ says Kalumba.
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The village was a beneficiary of a program implemented by the Ministry of Local Government in Uganda. The initiative organized seminars and workshops for the farmers to learn agroecology, including how to mulch, intercrop legumes with grains, and merge sustainable methods into their agriculture and livestock practices. Through these workshops, the community learned about organic fertilization, reduced tillage, irrigation, biological pest control, and cultivar choice.
Halima Nanjego, who farms cassava, sweet potatoes and maize on her half-acre farm, says life has been transformed since Grainpulse taught her streamlined planting techniques. Last year, the company’s mobile farmer training center-a retrofitted Mercedes truck equipped with lab for soil testing analysis, as well as a fold-out tent where upwards of 100 farmers can attend training sessions-stopped at Nanjego’s farm. The truck has traveled across the country, crisscrossing rural communities and hard-to-reach areas to teach farmers how to prepare land, apply fertilizer, use seeds, and manage diseases and mold like aflatoxin.
Here's a summary of the key crops and their historical significance in Uganda:
| Crop | Significance |
|---|---|
| Coffee | Major cash crop; Uganda's main export earner. |
| Cotton | Second most important traditional cash crop in the 1950s; declined in the 1970s but recovered in the 1980s. |
| Tea | Favorable climate and soil conditions; production declined in the 1970s but increased in the 1980s. |
| Tobacco | Major foreign exchange earner; production suffered from political insecurity and economic mismanagement. |
| Sugar | Once substantial industry; almost collapsed by the early 1980s but later rehabilitated. |
| Plantains, Bananas, Cassava, Sweet Potatoes, Millet, Sorghum, Corn, Beans, Groundnuts | Main food crops. |
Historical Context
In the 1950s until independence in 1962, British Colonial Office policy encouraged the development of co-operatives for subsistence farmers to partially convert to selling their crops: principally coffee, cotton, tobacco, and maize. In each political district, there was a co-operative "union" which built stores and, eventually, with government money, processing factories: cotton ginneries, tobacco dryers, and maize mills. The number of farmers involved rose exponentially as the co-operatives made the profits that the Asian traders had previously made.
Throughout the 1970s, political insecurity, mismanagement, and a lack of adequate resources seriously eroded incomes from commercial agriculture. Production levels in general were lower in the 1980s than in the 1960s. Technological improvements had been delayed by economic stagnation, and agricultural production still used primarily unimproved methods of production on small, widely scattered farms, with low levels of capital outlay. Other problems facing farmers included the disrepair of the nation's roads, the nearly destroyed marketing system, increasing inflation, and low producer prices.
In the late 1980s, the government attempted to encourage diversification in commercial agriculture that would lead to a variety of nontraditional exports.
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Farm Africa Project in Uganda. Source: farmafrica.org
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