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Women are important actors in agricultural development in Uganda but most of their contributions are not recognized by their local society. Bol Nyapo Tenge is a women’s group based in Lira district, Northern Uganda. The group is led by Grace Adongo, who used to have a pretty low income and suffered to a lack of empowerment on gender roles. The group members used to frequently miss trainings whenever called upon and Grace could not do anything about it.
Grace’s group was enrolled under the GIZ program “Promoting Rural Development in Northern Uganda (PRUDEV)”in April 2020 as one of the benefiting groups under the component “Water for Agricultural Production”, which is being implemented by AFC. A Community Based Trainer (CBT) was assigned to the group and engaged the women in frequent trainings on good agricultural practices (GAP). Grace, as a leader, embarked on supporting fellow women to put in practice what they had learned and made follow-up visits to individual group member’s fields, guiding them on seed selection, weeding of their crops and marketing, amongst others. Grace gained confidence and strength to lead the group and brought all members back to vegetable production.
She made sure that all members of her group produced at least one crop in all the 3 seasons for vegetable production and rechecked if members were following the GAP practices. Grace realized that most women feared to go to Lira city to buy the improved seeds and other inputs for better crop management. This lack of improved inputs had negative effects on yields and connected profits.
Grace:“I decided that after selling my watermelons on the local market, I bring back seeds and other inputs to sell them in my town.” In her three production seasons, she saved money from her business with watermelons, tomatoes and cabbage and finally established a small input shop. Main beneficiaries of the shop where the female farmers of her group. In addition, she used her money to buy a grinding mill for maize and millet. These investments strengthened the local community and therefore grace´s group even more. The women entrepreneurs avoided long distances walks to the next mill and could use their time more efficiently with e.g. work on and maintenance of their fields. The outcome is that Grace has laid the groundwork for becoming a small agro-entrepreneur, who is not only active in crop production, she is providing important services to her fellow female farmers. In general, it allowed her to improve the overall socio-economic situation: “I am happy with all this. Before, I did not keep records and I never had cash in the house. From now on, I have a more regular life, I am sleeping daily and I feel secure concerning my income situation. My husband is very happy with me and so supportive. When I am out checking my members’ fields, he remains home to help me grind and even make sales in the shop.”
For more information about the program: matthias.webendoerfer [at] afci.de