The Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF) to increase productivity, market access, and resilience of select value chains in the project area and to respond promptly and effectively to an eligible crisis or emergency under the Uganda Climate Smart Agricultural Transformation Project (UCSATP).
This was revealed during the national stakeholders engagement that included the CAOs, RDCs, and Production Coordinators of the selected districts at the Munyonyo Commonwealth Resort in Kampala.
The project will be implemented in target 69 districts across 13 agro-ecological zones of the country, including 7 refugee-hosting districts. The selection of these districts in the agro-ecological zones was based on the climate change vulnerability of the watersheds, poverty levels at the sub-regional level, and watershed degradation.
The Minister for Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries, Frank Tumwebaze said that the project life is six years however they hope to create a big impact in two years and this time around the emphasis is on intervening to ensure good harvesting, good storage as well as making sure that the gardens are linked to the market.
“The project will do a lot of infrastructure, and mechanization support to the farmers, cooperatives, and groups. We will also use this project to revamp our research stations because that’s where seeds come from, if we don’t build our seed capacity as a country then our food security, nutrition, and animal food security will be endangered,” he added.
Tumwebaze therefore promised to support various stages of the value chain development for the selected enterprises per district as well as enabling market access and disease control infrastructure.
He also emphasized the district leaders to ensure that groups or large-scale farming entities that they select to receive government support for mechanization and various machinery, should be those with established effective demand to avoid the ‘white elephant’ syndrome and underutilization of resources.
According to the Maj. Gen David Kasura Kyomukama the Permanent Secretary at MAAIF, the project will support the Government of Uganda to identify, develop, and incentivize the adoption of climate-smart agriculture technologies and management practices that contribute to climate adaptation of agricultural value chains to sustainably increase productivity and household incomes while enhancing resilience to climatic shocks.
He said that the project is expected to directly benefit about 760,000 households (3,900,000 individuals), and indirectly benefit approximately 1,900,000 households (9,500,000 individuals).
“Among these, beneficiaries from the non-refugee districts will be about 620,000 households, 60,000 refugee households, and 80,000 refugee-hosting households which represent 65% of the total population in the project districts” the Permanent Secretary added.
Kasura also highlighted that one of the biggest constraints on public investments is the availability of land and this project too has several investments that will require land including investments in water for agricultural production, Fisheries and Aquaculture, and Mechanization among others but there shall be no compensation for land acquisition.
“We have had scenarios where districts agree to offer land and when it comes to actual implementation, then they begin to ask for compensation, therefore I want to emphatically state that we shall not put any investment in the district unless we verify that the land is available for the investments,” he noted.
Gabriel Atama, Tororo’s Chief Administrative Officer (CAO), highlighted that according to the project design, it will be successful because the process is built on lead farmers given resources, and based on that the chances of success are very high as compared to other projects.
“For Tororo, we are a little bit lucky because we have part of the land and I think we will be able to implement the project as provided by the guidelines, we have enough land which can be used for aquaculture, fisheries and other types of projects that can be put up in line with the new project coming up,” he remarked.
About the project
The Uganda Climate Smart Agricultural Transformation Project (UCSATP) is a six (6) year implementation by the Ministry of Agriculture Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF) and its agencies the National Agricultural Research Organization (NARO); the National Animal Genetics Resources Centre and Data Bank (NAGRC&DB) and Uganda National Meteorological Authority (UNMA).
The total project financing is $354.7 million. This financing is made up of a $325 million credit from the International Development Association of the World Bank and $25 million grant from the Window for Host Communities (WHR) and a $4.7 million counterpart funding from the government of Uganda.
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