Strategy for agricultural marketing and agro-processing ... - Foodnet

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2. BACKGROUND The medium- to long-term development goal of Uganda is to reduce absolute poverty to less than 10 per cent by 2017. The Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP) is Government’s main planning framework, establishing the principles to guide investment plans and manage the economy in order to achieve its development goal. Poverty eradication is to be attained through successful implementation of all four of the PEAP’s “pillars”. These are: Pillar 1 Creating a framework for rapid economic growth and structural transformation Pillar 2 Ensuring good governance and security; Pillar 3 Directly increasing the ability of the people to raise their incomes; and Pillar 4 Directly increasing the quality of life of the poor. In order to implement the PEAP, various strategies have been designed, or will be designed to operationalise these pillars. The Plan for Modernisation of Agriculture was prepared to contribute fundamentally to Pillar 3 of the PEAP. It is a Government framework for the eradication of poverty through the transformation of agriculture and agro-based rural enterprises - from subsistence to commercial production. The objectives of PMA are, in particular: Increasing agricultural sector incomes; Improving household food security through the market; Creating gainful employment through secondary processing and services; and Promoting the sustainable use and management of natural resources. In the PMA implementation process, there are seven priority areas for public action, namely: Improving the access to and quality of, agricultural advisory services; Promoting agricultural research and technology development; Promoting agro-processing and improving access to markets; Increasing access to and availability of, rural finance; Promoting agricultural skills and knowledge through formal and informal education; Promoting the sustainable use and management of natural resources; and Improving supportive physical infrastructure. It is the third of these that provides the focus for this Strategy. The PMA contains vision and mission statements for improving market access. The vision statement is: “increased and sustainable supply of and demand for competitive processed and non-processed agro-products on domestic, regional and international markets”. The mission statement is: “to implement measures that facilitate increased supply of requisite inputs in order to ensure increased and sustained supply of competitive processed and unprocessed Uganda agricultural products in domestic, regional and international markets consistent with the economic growth objectives of the country”. This Marketing and Agro-Processing Strategy (MAPS) has been designed to contribute to both this vision and mission. The PMA recognises that improved market access is a key condition for the transformation of the sector from subsistence to commercial production. The main objective of the Strategy is therefore to promote market access for farmers. It defines the priority areas for action and the ways in which its associated programme of interventions should be operationalised. 2
As far as access to markets is concerned, the private and public sectors play different roles but they should, nevertheless, be complementary. The private sector is responsible for the production, processing and marketing of agricultural products, while the role of the public sector is one of creating a conducive environment by drawing up appropriate policies, removing barriers at all levels, improving infrastructure and putting in place an appropriate legal and regulatory framework. The MAPS highlights the priority areas in which the public sector will involve itself in order to facilitate the activities of the private sector. At the same time, it takes cognisance of the fact that there are already many initiatives underway aimed at overcoming the constraints to improved market access, while appreciating that there remain a number of areas still to be addressed. It is believed that through work being undertaken on the priority areas detailed herein, the private sector will be assisted to identify market opportunities for both marketing and value-added processing. Once such opportunities have been identified, private sector interests will be in a position to work with existing institutions and programmes in developing business plans and in selecting investment options to exploit these opportunities. Whilst the emphasis of the strategy may appear to be on marketing and processing agricultural commodities for export, nevertheless the importance of the local market is implicitly recognised in this Strategy. (For example, it is clear that the focus for marketing such crops as beans and Matooke bananas will remain the local market for the foreseeable future). Thus, many of the constraints and the programmes to overcome them enumerated below, apply to both the domestic and export markets. Finally, the Strategy makes no attempt to interfere with the basic laws of economics as they affect the supply, demand and prices of agricultural commodities produced in the country but, rather, it seeks to make the market more transparent to all those actors participating in it and to remove any obstacles which impede its efficient functioning. In this way, producers will be able to compete more effectively. 3
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