Uganda: No Farmer Left Behind

Comments: 0 - Date: July 4th, 2009 - Categories: Field Reports

Today in Uganda, newspapers announced that the current president, Museveni (abbreviated in the press as “M7”), aims to stay in power until 2021. It’s an interesting move: a political leader to declare his presidential intentions an entire decade ahead of schedule… it seems to indicate that the leader has lost the confidence to carry the electorate over the next few elections. Our host in Kamapla claims that M7’s growing unpopularity in Kampala is tempered by popular support in rural areas. It seems that Museveni’s political strategy is to woo the rural vote by providing farmers with, among other things,  agricultural inputs. A recently launched agricultural program (whose name elicited eye rolls from one of our recent interviewees) is the poorly named “Prosperity for All,” which attempts to provide a select group of agricultural industries with agriculture extension aid. I didn’t find it easy to find good media coverage – here is a brief Guardian UK post mentioning it, and here is a Ugandan editorial about the program.

It is clear that one challenge Becky, Charlene and I will have to undertake is the unpacking of the roles of each ingredient in the Ugandan agriculture extension alphabet soup. Some groups, like NAADS and NARO, are government run, but appear to be funded in part by international aid. Thus, when outside funding dries up due to recession, these agencies face the possibility of losing influence and momentum. Other players, like USAID, may possibly provide stable program funding, but may also prioritize American economic interests above the interests of small scale farmers. We have many questions to explore, as we begin to dig through the role of various nodes in the Ugandan agricultural network.

So what does this mean for our project? Primarily, it informs our group about the need to take into account unpredictable political forces that assert pressure outside the market. For example, if external inputs are being provided to a selection of farmers simply for political reasons, the scalability of an ICT innovation might be effected.

Arrived in Kigali

Comments: 0 - Date: July 1st, 2009 - Categories: Field Reports

40 hours and one lost suitcase later, I’m set up in my rented house in Kacyiru, Kigali. My phone number her is (+250) 0785-144007. I’m on skype as jblumenstock and gtalk as jblumenstock@gmail.com. I’ll have reliable internet for the next month, a car from time to time, and potentially an extra bedroom if someone wants to visit 🙂

Team Uganda has arrived in Kampala!

Comments: 0 - Date: July 1st, 2009 - Categories: Field Reports

After spending three months working in Gabon and Ghana last summer, I always knew that I would want to return to the continent, but preferably, to East Africa. Naturally, I was thrilled when I received the opportunity to spend six weeks in Uganda on a research project through UC Berkeley, but funded by the Gates Foundation. Our objective is to identify a few of the most promising ways to improve the livelihood of smallholder farmers through ICT (Information and Communications Technology) applications. In preparing for this trip, we have already discovered a large number of exciting initiatives, ranging from radio talk shows and videos showing innovative farming techniques, to mobile apps that provide access to market prices and weather forecasts. Speaking of mobile apps, we will be working closely with Grameen’s AppLab in Uganda, and they just launched (with Google and MTN Uganda) a suite of mobile apps such as:

  • Farmer’s Friend – provides both agricultural tips and weather forecasts
  • Health Tips – provides sexual and reproductive health information
  • Clinic Finder – helps user to locate nearby health clinics
  • Google Trader – matches buyers and sellers of agricultural products and even livestock!

Anyway, after about 24 hours of traveling, Becky, Michael and I arrived safely in Kampala late last night. We are staying in Ntinda with a kind man named Grace, who is the Managing Director of the Farmer’s Media Newspaper, which is distributed to farmers all over Uganda. Grace and his colleague Peter have been incredibly hospitable, and spent all day today showing us around Kampala, which reminds me a lot of Accra, but much more crowded. As we explored the city, there were multiple times when I thought I was going to get hit by a boda-boda (motorcycle taxi). Armed with MTN Uganda SIM cards, a bunch of Ugandan shillings, and a day’s worth of experience taking matatus (taxi buses), we’re excited for Day 2. In the morning, we will meet one of our Grameen contacts and in the afternoon, with the CEO of Appfrica Labs, a software development firm/incubator based in Kampala whose mission is to provide mentorship and work opportunities to East African software entrepreneurs.

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