Uganda Strategy Support Program

MOTIVATION

For Uganda to strengthen its economic transformation, the country needs to enhance pro-poor growth, increase competitiveness, and strive for efficient public investment in agricultural development. To address these problems and boost the impact of agricultural growth, the Government of Uganda invited IFPRI to create the Uganda Strategy Support Program (USSP) in 2007. Donors, including DFID, supported USSP to build local capacity and contribute to policy-relevant research for the design and implementation of Uganda’s agricultural and rural development strategies.

OUTCOMES

• To help Uganda reach the CAADP target of six percent agricultural growth, IFPRI supported Ugandan institutional partners, such as the Secretariat for the Plan for Modernisation of Agriculture, to develop an evidence base for the formulation of the country’s Development Strategy and Investment Plan for the Agriculture Sector. This plan, which includes investments to enhance sustainable production and improve access to markets, as well as support for a diverse portfolio of agricultural commodities, is the center of the CAADP-Uganda Compact signed in March 2010 by the Ugandan government and a number of regional and international stakeholders and donors.
• The development and analysis of new agricultural datasets produced by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics have helped stakeholders in Uganda’s agricultural sector better understand the potential trajectories for agricultural development, including the implications for Uganda’s smallholder farmers.
• Timely studies, including the following, have informed the national policy discourse:
  • An assessment of how to invest future oil revenues, which are expected to be significant, to support agricultural growth and mitigate the negative economic consequences faced by countries that experience such windfall gains. This study is part of the literature informing the Ugandan government as it decides how to use these new revenues—including how much to invest in the agricultural sector.
  • An evaluation of the likely impact of rising global food prices on poor households in the short term and medium to long term. The study found that global food price changes have a minimal effect on domestic markets, and that the diversity of staples available for consumption enhances the resilience of Ugandan households. This information formed part of the government’s justification for its conservative response to higher global food prices: higher prices were treated more as an opportunity for Uganda’s farmers than as a serious threat to the welfare of poor households.
• Contribution to the Uganda Nutrition Action Plan (UNAP). IFPRI researchers were members of the UNAP drafting committee and provided research results, particularly on nutrition policy processes, to determine the Plan’s priorities and to shape its content and presentation before Uganda’s president formally launched it in November 2011.