The African Development Bank is supporting commercial farming in Uganda with an $80.68-million loan to finance agricultural value chain development in the East African country.

The Agricultural Value Chain Development Project’s objective is to improve household incomes, enhance food security, and strengthen climate resilience mechanisms through commercial agricultural practices, sustainable natural resources management and agricultural enterprise development.

The project will promote economic growth and poverty reduction through enhanced agricultural productivity and commercialization with emphasis on maize, rice, and diary/beef value chains. The project will innovatively use information and communications technology platform to reach millions of farmers and other value chain actors.

The project is designed within the context of Uganda’s National Development Plan II, which seeks to translate the country’s Vision 2040 into action. It is anchored on the Country Strategy for Uganda (2017-2021), which is articulated around two strategic pillars – infrastructure development for value addition and industrialization; and skills and capacity development for poverty reduction.

The Feed Africa Strategy prioritizes agriculture, food security and the promotion of export for commodities produced in the regional member countries through improved value addition and processing.

Over 14 million people in 33 districts of which 50.1% are women will benefit directly and indirectly from the project.

The total cost of the project is estimated at US $91.97 million. The African Development Bank is contributing $80.68 million through a concessional loan from the African Development Fund (ADF). The government of Uganda will provide the remaining counterpart funding of $10.49 million.

Source: African Development Bank