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Over 90% of the population in northern Uganda lives from agriculture. In view of the growing population and advancing climate change, the pressure on water resources for agricultural production has increased significantly over the past years. While irrigated agriculture is still relatively underdeveloped, it can be used to better regulate access to water, make harvests safer and increase yields as well as income. However, irrigated agriculture is still at an early stage in Northern Uganda, and knowledge on the different types of water abstraction, water resource management, irrigation techniques and good agronomic practices in vegetable production as well as its potential for income generation is rather low.
In this context, AFC has been supporting small-scale irrigated agriculture as well as water resource management within the GIZ programme Promoting Rural Development in Northern Uganda (PRUDEV) since March of 2020. PRUDEV promoted agricultural-based development of the rural economy in selected districts of Northern Uganda. The target group of the project were the rural population with a focus on women and young people. The programme worked in five complementary fields of action: i) strengthening of district governments, ii) SME support, iii) access to finance, iv) monitoring of climate emissions - the fifth field of action v) water for agricultural production fell under the responsibility of AFC.
AFC supported some 1.020 small-scale farmers, organized into 53 groups, in the field of irrigated agriculture as well as 9 district governments and a relevant number of local communities in improved water resource management. The capacity development of farmers has been implemented via 26 community-based trainers who were trained and coached by AFC local staff and external experts. The training focused on organizational development, irrigation technologies, good agricultural practices, market development and the set up and strengthening of inclusive business models. The irrigated production has put a special focus on horticulture during the dry season (cabbage, tomatoes, onion, green pepper, eggplant and watermelon), when market prices and marketing opportunities were high. Technologically, our activities supported the dissemination of adapted technologies for small-scale irrigation in order to increase water efficiency and labor saving (e.g. solar water pumps; drip, sprinkler and furrow irrigation; water harvesting).
Our contract with GIZ ends in September of 2023 and during the 3 and more years of implementation, the farmers have gained knowledge, experiences and lessons learnt, that can serve any organization or farmers group in Northern Uganda that plans to start irrigated agricultural production. To this effect, the related key principles have been summarized in this video, which, apart from English, has also been produced in the two mayor local languages, Acholi and Langi, in order to facilitate its dissemination on the ground.
ENG: https://youtu.be/0y2TdzLEN-c