Overview
of Enterprise Development and Promotion (EDP).
Enterprise Development and Promotion, emphasizes
market-orientation agricultural production
and commercialization to exploit comparative
and competitive advantages.
It aims at creating or improving and expanding
the operations of an organized effort intended
to return profits. It includes investment
in specific farming activities geared towards
exploiting a market opportunity and managing
risks in the investment. This is achieved
through implementation of strategies for improvement
of productivity or quality of agricultural
products. NAADS supports farmers to
produce the enterprises that are profitable
and to meet market demands both in quality
and quantity, to be able to exploit available
or potential market opportunities.
Approaches in Developing and Promoting
Enterprises
NAADS has over the years developed three
approaches in developing and promoting the
enterprises. These are:
- Farmer-driven Approach/Conventional
Under this approach, farmers through their
farmer groups identify, and prioritize viable
enterprises through a facilitated participatory
process guided by a situational analysis.
The criteria for enterprise selection include
comparative and competitive advantages for
a given locality for instance:
- Enterprise profitability
- Market availability
- Financial implications / investment (Capital out-lay)
- Risks in the context of shocks, trends and seasonality
- Production knowledge of the farmers
This approach is expected to give rise to
intensified production of the selected enterprises
in each sub-county, district or agro-ecological
zone. A number of enterprises have been identified
through this process over the years and it
is expected that as the enterprise selection
process is refined, this will result into
agricultural zoning. Click here to see the
Manuals
The constraints associated with the selected priority enterprises are identified and they are the basis on which Advisory Services and Technology Development services are provided.
2. Intergrated support to Farmer Groups(ISFG) Component of the Rural development Strategy.
The Integrated Support to Farmers’ Groups (ISFG) is one of the components of the Rural Development Strategy. The ISFG is designed to complement and strengthen activities already being executed by NAADS to enhance the attainment of increased farm enterprise productivity and profitability. Through this support, the capacity of farmer groups to organise for effective access to input and output markets is further developed, and their ability to take up and sustainably use improved technologies is enhanced.
ISFG objectives include to:
- Deepen farmer institution development and organisation;
- Increase effective farmer demand for productivity enhancing technologies;
- Increase farmers’ access to input and product markets through active linkage of farmer groups with processors/produce buyers and input stockists.
ISFG funding is provided to the sub-county farmers’ forum as a grant, which in turn extends to individual farmers’ groups as revolving funds. Each of the beneficiary farmers’ group therefore operates a revolving scheme to scale up enterprise technologies within farmers’ group or on their own farms.
3. ISFG link to Micro Finance Interventions
The ISFG is designed to boost the already on-going farmer internal resource mobilisation efforts, which may take the form of namely: Rotational Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCAs); Accumulating Savings and Credit Associations (ASCAs); and Inter-group Savings and Credit Associations (IGSCAs) that are being encouraged by NAADS as part of the strategy for sustainable group development. For this reason, the ISFG stimulates farmers’ repayment of technology input into farmers’ own accounts to constitute a revolving fund that will ensure an increasing number of farmers accessing funds for purchase of inputs and other financial services.
The establishment of revolving schemes with ISFG grants lead to increased internally mobilised resources coupled with increased demand for technologies. This in turn stimulates demand for Micro-finance Institutions (MFI) services at sub-county level.
The linkage will ensure connecting NAADS farmer groups to financial services from microfinance institutions and contributing to the goals of the Government’s Rural Financial Services Plan to increase rural saving and rural financial services
The main objective is to link farmer groups under NAADS to Government’s plan (MOP) to promote savings and expansion of savings and credit cooperative organizations (SACCOs) or other rural micro finance institutions.
4.Partnership development
The principle for Partnership is that, NAADS develops Strategic
partnerships with key stakeholders already involved in the development
and promotion of that particular enterprise to enhance their efforts.
In this way, enterprises can be developed faster into commercial concerns
to ensure that farming becomes a business. The major principles behind
the partnerships include:
-
Linkage to markets and infrastructure:
strategic enterprise development and promotion will lead to bulk production
and marketing of produce and it therefore requires that farmers can readily
access inputs including technologies as well as output markets and that
the associated infrastructure is available.
-
Establishment of quality standards: successful exploitation of national,
regional and international markets demands the establishment of quality
standards for Uganda's products. This involves generating data for establishment
of these standards, adherence to such standards as prerequisite and development
of a grading system.
-
Capacity building:The most important
way of addressing the majority of the challenges is through building capacity
of all stakeholders to efficiently identify and address the constraints to
production, processing and marketing of agricultural produce.
-
Technology
development and sharing: Modern/improved technology is required for improved production
and efficiency. It therefore means that new technologies have been identified
and will be made available to farmers to enhance production in terms of both
quantity and quality.
-
Provision of inputs:Enterprise
development requires specific inputs (seed and stock, equipment and specific tools, chemicals etc.),
which farmers cannot easily access due to the required capital investment.
Partnerships enable farmers to access credit and/or leasing facilities
in various forms for such inputs
For details about this approach click on the
link that follows: Strategic Enterprise Development
and Promotion through Partnership with Private
Sector
Partnerships for technology Development,Value addition and market linkages :
| Enterprise |
Potential Private Sector Partner |
| Sunflower |
Mukwano |
| General technology development and Advisory services |
FICA |
| NASECO |
| Bananas |
AGT |
| Goats |
Katebe |
| Sembeguya |
| Rice |
Upland Rice Millers |
| Tea |
Igara Grower's Tea Factory |
| Kayonza Grower's Tea factory |
| Good African Tea |
| Mpanga Grower;s Tea Factory |
| Kinkizi Development Company |
| Horticulture |
Bukonzo Mixed Farm |
| UCE/IICD |
Market Information services |
| Enterprise Uganda |
Agri-Business Development |
| KARI(NARO) |
Post Harvest Handling -Grains |
|
