Smallholder farmers make up approximately 89% of Uganda’s farming population and produce up to 80% of the nation’s total agricultural output.
Despite their crucial role, these smallholder farmers, especially those in last-mile communities, often face significant challenges in accessing modern farming equipment, machinery, and digital resources to enhance their productivity. This digital divide hampers their productivity and limits their ability to fully contribute to the country’s economic growth and improve their standard of living.
This week, the Uganda National Farmers Federation, in partnership with the Ministry for Agricultural, Animal Industry and Fisheries, held the 30th edition of the annual National Agricultural Show in Jinja under the theme “Innovating Pathways to Farm Business-led Agro-Industrialization.”
This year’s edition is aimed at showcasing innovative solutions in the form of products or services that farmers can integrate into their farming practices to improve productivity and access to vital information, such as weather forecasts, market prices, and best farming practices.
While officiating the launch of the show, the Minister of State for Animal Industry, Hon. Lt. Col (Rtd) Bright Rwamirama, urged stakeholders across the agricultural value chain to adopt scientific technologies and digital innovations to improve the country’s food security, increase import substitution, enhance value addition, and mitigate climate change.
“The government, under the National Development Plan (NDP III) on the Agro-industrialization Program and support from the Science Technology and Innovation (STI) Secretariat, has focused on creating technologically driven pathways such as machinery and equipment, heavily reliant on Research and Development (R&D), and digital programs that train and equip farmers with digital tools to improve agricultural production and productivity; post-harvest handling and storage; agro-processing and value addition across the value chain; market access and competitiveness of agricultural products in domestic and international markets; and strengthen agricultural institutions to include smallholder farmers into the digital and money economy. We believe these interventions will increase their household income, improve their quality of living, and eradicate poverty among farmers,” Rwamirama said.
Rwamirama added, “Through programs like the Parish Development Model, we have mobilized and sensitized stakeholders at the grassroots level across the agriculture value-chain on how to access ICT infrastructure and affordable credit solutions, enabling them to produce substitute products that have high-impact value addition. Together with the National Agricultural Research Organization (NARO), we continue to provide farmers with improved seedlings and pesticides and conduct fertility and pest soil testing to ensure that our produce is of high quality and quantity and can be exported.”
The NDP III agro-industrialization agenda directly aligns with what Innovation Village is implementing under the Digital Economy Program, an intervention that seeks to provide digital infrastructure, skills, and tools to digitalize various sectors, including agriculture, across its value chain—from data collection, farming, and input provision to exportation.
According to Saul Weikama, the Digital Economy Practice Lead at Innovation Village, the program is aimed at broadening and championing the global digital transformation initiative to accelerate economic growth and job creation.
Weikama said, “Together with our partners, we provide a technology platform for innovators and MSMEs to leverage and create digital services and solutions for remote communities that have been traditionally excluded from formal commerce. This enables them to tap into the digital footprint to manage their data, production processes, connect with wider markets, and manage transactions.
“By leveraging the shared digital infrastructure created by Community Pass, the program will enable the creation of innovative solutions that bring critical financial and related services closer to communities. The platform will also enable innovators to expand their access and reach, reduce costs, and realize new revenue opportunities.”
He further added, “To date, we have partnered with three tech companies: Hamwe, MobiPay Agro-system Limited, and Service Corporate, which have graduated from the Community Pass sandbox. Currently, Akello Banker and Ensibuuko are in the sandbox. These partnerships are intended to create linkages between farmers, cooperatives, and buyers. Through the features embedded within Community Pass, we have aggregated these companies into a shared platform to strengthen their capacity to become resilient and efficient.”
“At agricultural show, we are profiling farmers through our partner agent network to collect, aggregate, and upload information onto one integrated platform so that the farmers can access more finances and get paid faster” Weikama added.
Carol Kakooza, Chief Executive Officer at Axiom Zorn, an AgTech data service provider emphasized the importance of farmers to plug into digital technologies to grow their platform beyond their physical reach, build a strong credit score database that they can leverage on their portfolio to access financial services, new market linkages and business development opportunities.
“Through our Digital Empowerment platform, we bring together isolated production activities of smallholder farmers, businesses of agro dealers and SMEs to access low interest loans, provide certification for quality and safety control, and source suitable insurance policies for their produce to mitigate risk in losses. This has helped eliminate most of the conventional bottlenecks initially faced by farmers”
“This platform has enabled us to digitize and synchronize the database of farmers, co-operatives and Agro-SMEs. The data will be processed and used to meet the various needs of farmers and partners in the value chain. For instance, financial Institutions can access the credit worthiness of a farmer, insurers get to know how many farmers are up for insurance over a known size of land while project implementers can easily select farmers and value chain of their choice to deal with” Kakooza added.
The Minister of Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI), Monica Musenero said, “For the last two years, the STI Secretariat has been building a framework that creates pathways for the ‘New Economy.’ This entails making key sectors like agriculture, which were not traditionally part of the digital economy but significantly contribute to GDP, included in the new economy by leveraging STI.”
Musenero said, “The shift from the traditional to the new economy has been prioritized on the industrial value chain of traditional raw consumed products or those with limited value addition, especially in agriculture, which is predominantly peasantry and subsistence. Part of our strategy entails generating evidence-based research and strategic focus on a qualitative leap by shifting from a raw material economy to creating a knowledge economy based on the sale of value-added goods, with the goal of attaining a GDP of USD 550 billion from the current USD 55 billion.”
The successful integration of technology in last-mile agricultural communities requires the collaboration of various stakeholders, including government agencies, non-governmental organizations, private sector players, and local communities. By working together, we can create an enabling environment for digital transformation in agriculture, ensuring that smallholder farmers are not left behind in the digital age.
By bridging the digital divide, Uganda can unlock the full potential of its agricultural sector. Empowered with digital tools and resources, smallholder farmers can enhance their productivity, improve their livelihoods, and earn more to contribute to the nation’s economic growth. The future of Ugandan agriculture lies in the hands of these resilient farmers, and with the right support, they can lead the way towards a more prosperous and technologically advanced agricultural landscape.
