07uq-4963 - Programme Weaving the oilseed web
The vegetable oilseed sector in Uganda is poised to go through a tremendous development with a huge potential to contribute to the transformation of current subsistence farming into farming for improved food security, farming to create work and farming as a commercial enterprise. However, with inadequate market organization, regulations and capable institutions, the sector may fail to realize this promise. Currently prices fluctuate highly and are under the control of middlemen. Farmers’ innovation ability and improved new technologies are not readily adopted and adequately promoted to cause adoption for use in the sector. Therefore both inputs and outputs of the sector are unrealistic. There are current interventions that could have been well intended but there is little or no complementarity that could accelerate the achievement of the objectives intended. The future development of the oilseed sector in Uganda should be viewed in the context of the changing regional and international markets, consumer demands and desires. The initiation of the free trade agreement between Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania will form the East African common market which could have a drastic impact on the relation between producers, processors and retailers. The regional market has a population of about 120M people with low edible oil per capita consumption ranging between 3-7kgs, revealing a big regional market. Also changing demands and desires, such as the need for biodiesel in European countries may create opportunities for Uganda to diversify its income basket by growing crops like jatropha. Biodiesel may also fuel rural motorizations of processing machineries. Consequently, the changes in the regional and international environment shall impact positively on the development of Uganda’s oilseed sector. In order to spur development of the sector, lessons learned from experiences in regional and international partnership in the oilseed sector in the developed countries should be carefully evaluated and considered. A strong and efficient Institution is critical to any successful development of any sector, therefore institutional and organizational sector capacity strengthening will be necessary to ensure that the sector develops. Uganda Oilseed Producers and Processors Association has played a central role in organizing farmers and processors groups, but in order to pursue activities that further strengthen the sector under the programme ‘weaving the oilseed web’, the Uganda Oilseed Producers and Processor’s Association (UOSPA) requires strengthening of her capacity to be able to build capacity of the farmer groups as well as work with key stakeholders e.g. the processors to achieve the development of the sector. UOSPA will expand its reach to further weave the sector web by ensuring frequent and effective communication between all key players for example, a direct linkage with member stakeholders and government to allow for timely development of rules and regulations to facilitate an economically viable sector with shared benefits to all involved; it will promote public and private partnership that entails reciprocal obligations, mutual accountability, contractual agreement, sharing of investment, joint responsibility in design and execution of weaving the oilseed web. To support capacity building along the entire value chain and address the complexity of issues that are hampering the sector development namely; technical, economic and institutional capacity building, the proposed programme will focus on promoting farmers’ innovative farming systems that will combine production of food crops to ensure food security and production of commercial crops for income generation. Production systems shall be developed that exploit gender and ecological synergy for efficient use of on farm and human resources. A variety of processing technologies shall be introduced to allow a multitude of players to participate in the sector, such as farm equipment for farmers to add value to their raw material. In addition to institutional capacity strengthening, farmer groups’ capacity will be built to improve on marketing information regarding the flow of agro input and output goods. Investments funding and profit saving will be promoted. Education of staff to enhance human resource output and efficiency will be carried out “on the job” to allow for trained staff to remain engaged in their work place. All this would be done in collaboration with government agencies like line ministries, National Planning Authority, National Bureau of Standards, Makerere University and an international coalition from Agri-ProFocus partners, donors and others. The ultimate aim of weaving the oilseed programme is to develop a resilient commodity sector that can cope with the changing environmental, social, political, economic and international trends and demand.