Agriculture Cluster Development Project

closed

The project development objective for the Agriculture Cluster Development Project for Uganda is to raise on-farm productivity, production, and marketable volumes of selected agricultural commodities in specified geographic clusters. The proposed project will adopt a phased approach, starting in a small number of clusters with one or two commodities, and then building toward broader geographic coverage including all five selected commodities. The project consists of five components. The objective of component 1, support for intensification of on-farm production, is to support the intensification of on-farm production of five priority commodities (maize, cassava, beans, rice, and coffee). An e- voucher and associated training program will be piloted (reaching some 30,000 farm households) during the initial first year to achieve the objective. Component 2, preparation for agricultural water management investment, will oversee the intensification of rice production under the cluster approach and will involve adoption of irrigated rice varieties grown under sustainable wetland management. This approach is expected to raise cropping intensities and mitigate current patterns of land and water degradation in lowland areas that are being developed informally. Component 3, market linkages, post-harvest handling, storage and value addition, will provide technical assistance (TA) and matching grants to farmers’ associations to improve their capacity for marketing and post-harvest handling of farm produce. Under this component, the project will also finance infrastructure works to eliminate bottlenecks and trouble spots on rural access roads critical for the movement of farm produce to market. Component 4, project management, policy, regulatory, and information and communication technology (ICT) functions of Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF), aims to: (i) ensure project management and coordination; (ii) strengthen MAAIF’s effectiveness in carrying out its role with respect to policy and regulations affecting agricultural input and output markets; and (iii) develop and implement an ICT-based agricultural information platform to enable effective real-time coordination and management of information at every level.