Analysis of Uganda’s agriculture sector performance for a USAID Agriculture Sector Leadership program

Agriculture Sector Leadership program
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Situation

After many years of funding agriculture programs in Uganda, USAID’s Feed the Future Enabling Environment for Agriculture Activity observed a reluctance on the part of the government and some private sector stakeholders to take actions that would accelerate the agriculture sector's performance. In response, USAID designed a leadership program—and sought expert input for a provocative analysis of sector performance over the past 50 years, coupled with an ambitious target-setting exercise for the next 5-10 years.

The analysis, findings, and recommendations were to provide inputs in the design of an Agriculture Sector Leadership (LEAD) program. LEAD had a clear mandate to address enabling environment constraints. The participants were a high-level, multidisciplinary group of professionals, some of the country’s most trusted and well-known leaders, committed to helping Uganda achieve its full agricultural potential.

Industries
Strategy, Data & Insights
Smallholder Agriculture Development
Public Policy
Impact Evaluation & Learning
Agribusiness & Food Systems
Climate Action
Gender Equity & Inclusion
Youth Economic Opportunity
Economic Growth & Trade
Engagement

ORI applied its deep understanding and context of Uganda’s and Africa’s agriculture sector to analyze and describe past and present key performance indicators and assess Uganda’s progress against them for crops, livestock, aquaculture, inputs, policy, research, gender, access to finance, trade, markets, and climate change. Common myths about Uganda’s agriculture sector were identified and challenged.

In delivering this assignment, ORI:

  • Applied rigorous evidence-based analysis of Uganda’s agriculture sector performance over the past 50 years and made detailed comparisons with identified “benchmark” countries.
  • Carried out detailed data collection and analysis and brought practical experience and support to several issues during these engagements.
  • Framed and described key performance indicators and assessed Uganda’s progress against them for crops, livestock, aquaculture, inputs, policy, research, gender, access to finance, trade, markets, and climate change.
  • Ranked Uganda’s position on each of the indicators against “benchmark” countries that were essentially at the same level of development 50 years ago.
  • Identified and challenged common myths about Uganda’s agriculture sector; for example, Ugandan soils are fertile, do not need fertilizer, and can grow just about everything you throw at it…; Crops do not require irrigation because it rains all the time in Uganda…; Uganda is/has the potential to be the breadbasket of East Africa…
  • Derived insights and recommendations for how Uganda can transform its agricultural sector.

 

The analysis showed that Uganda's agriculture sector has enormous unrealized potential. However, the sector’s performance has remained stagnant or declined for some industries, such as cotton, sorghum, and coffee. Urgent efforts were required to change the trendline and achieve the sector’s growth potential.

Outcomes
  • The study showed that Uganda had consistently performed very poorly in some key areas, especially in utilization of productivity-enhancing inputs and agro-infrastructure, and with sub-optimal yields across food crops and traditional cash crops.
  • Post-harvest losses remain high across the sector, linked to low use of inputs, inadequate mechanization, low levels of irrigation, and sub-optimal adoption of good agricultural practices and storage solutions.
  • Uganda lags behind its closest peers on some of the most critical performance indicators: Fertilizer use—lowest in the world; mechanization—only 9 tractors per square kilometers vs. 24 in Tanzania and 29 in Kenya; access to credit—much less developed; pesticide/crop protection solutions—lack of supplier/poor product diversity; yields—extremely low, e.g. Robusta coffee (0.6 metric tons per hectare for Uganda vs. 2.5 metric tons per hectare for Vietnam). Moreover, the performance of smallholder women farmers across any of these metrics is significantly lower than that of men farmers.
  • The result has been an almost complete lack of progress in increasing the productivity of a wide range of agricultural products. While the production of key crops such as coffee has increased arising from increased farmland under cultivation, for many other crops such as millets, cotton, and sorghum, production has been almost entirely stagnant over the last 50 years—a nearly unbelievable feat given the improvements in technology, crop science, and fertilizers, among others, since the 1960s.
  • ORI presented these findings, conclusions, and recommendations at the high-level launch of an 18-month LEAD program. The presentation provoked participants to commit to sector leadership and dedicated problem-solving. The study defined the baseline metrics and helped in goal setting for the leadership group.
  • The LEAD program has played an essential role in reversing the trend of agricultural sector stagnation. As an example, for 50 years (1965-2015), the highest coffee exports ever recorded was 254k metric tons in FY 1996/97. However, since 2016, coffee exports surpassed this performance, with the highest exports being 390k metric tons in FY2020/21. The volume of exports has continued to rise ever since.
  • This report's findings have been widely cited and instrumental in shaping policies and influencing decisions to improve Uganda’s agriculture sector performance. See: https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PA00X8JV.pdf; and https://www.theigc.org/sites/default/files/2021/09/01_Fowler_Rauschendorfer_MoFPED_Agro-industrialisation.pdf