The government of Uganda has come up with agriculture digitalization programme aimed at encouraging more youth into faming to boost their income and improve the country’s economy.
So far in the agriculture sector, the Digital Economy Programme has made considerable progress by understanding the value chain of most farmers and their challenges in a bid to provide support through creating market-driven technology-enabled solutions that suits young growers.
“Advocating for the digitalisation agenda is crucial to attaining economic recovery, creating job opportunities for young people, and realising the country’s sector vision by 2040,” said Charles Olweny Ojok, the Deputy Executive at National Planning Authority (NPA).
Last year, the programme studied the needs of 370 farmer producer organisations with 650,000 farmers, of which 250,000 are young farmers.
Digital platforms
In advancing this agenda, NPA last week launched several digital platforms urging farmers, technology entrepreneurs and organisations to embrace the shared platforms.
These platforms bring multiple service providers, ranging from input suppliers, insurance companies, and financial services providers together to serve young farmers.
“With these platforms the end user is set to enjoy reduced costs of production that include operational costs and on the other hand make it easier for service providers to reach last-mile users in the rural communities who, for a long time now, have been left out,” said Ojok.
The event is part of the Digital Economy Programme that Innovation Village is implementing in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation to enhance access to essential services, funding, markets, products, and employment for 3.4 million people living in far-flung areas across Uganda.
According to Ojok, the programme aligns well with Uganda’s commitment to creating a digitally driven economy and realising universal goals of inclusion, economic progress, sustainable development, and poverty eradication through digital transformation.
Helping farmers
In this, partners of the programme such as Uganda National Farmers Federation (UNFF) has come up with several interventions for training the farmers in marketing, financial literacy, business planning, and record keeping.
The programme will also provide capacity building to enable entrepreneurs have the right skills to design and implement solutions that bring multiple service providers together to offer affordable seamless technology-enabled services to smallholders especially the youth and women and to small business owners.
Also brought into the programme are Hamwe East Africa and channel partners such as the Association of Microfinance Institutions of Uganda and the Grain Council of Uganda to design and implement these interventions, and to support innovators build and scale appropriate solutions.
In addition, the programme supports solution providers with building, testing and refining high-impact sustainable solutions, finding more efficient and cost-effective ways to serve end users, with the main aim of taking solutions to market in a more effective way.
According to Adrian Bukenya, Mastercard Foundation country director, the programme seeks to enable about 4.3 million young people in Uganda to access dignified and fulfilling work by 2030.
