Livelihood Recovery in Northern Uganda
Challenge:
For 20 years after 1986, insecurity in the North of Uganda forced over 1.5 million people into Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps. This forced the population to move from living as small-scale farmers to living in scattered settlements, highly restricting their movements. Recently, people have been allowed to leave the camps and move back to “return sites” within close proximity to their homes and their land. Thus, they have returned to farming activities, but face many constraints including poor access to inputs, poor farming practices and inadequate extension services. Because of this, production does not reach its potential and malnutrition is widespread.
Action:
gorta is working with Caritas Pader in order to improve agricultural production for 200 households in Paimol Sub County of the Pader District. The project adopts various strategies to achieve this goal. It targets extremely vulnerable groups of households, including female and child headed, disabled, elderly and people with terminal sicknesses. The project has adopted a “seed fair and voucher” approach, with each beneficiary receiving seeds. Vouchers enable farmers with little or no seeds to acquire desired seeds from those with a surplus. The project trains community extension facilitators and 40 technology adoption committees from amongst the beneficiaries. They are trained based on interest and ability to lead and impart information. Demonstration is a corner stone of the project. Beneficiaries will have hands on experience of field lay out, timely planting, proper crop management practices and timely harvesting and post harvest handling techniques.
Benefit:
Target beneficiaries organized themselves into groups of 20, generally representing farmers from the same or nearby villages. Therefore, if they move back to their ancestral homes they can continue to work together. The “seed fair and voucher” system offers many benefits. It allows farmers to purchase seeds of their choice whilst farmers with seeds can earn money by selling them at fair prices. Also, farmers can depend on quality seeds inspected by technical staff before selling. Demonstrations and hands-on experiences will speed up the rate at which technology is adopted. By the project’s end, households should have the ability to improve their yields, increase the number of meals they eat each day and raise their income.
