Problem Statement:

Uganda is a richly blessed agricultural nation with fertile soils and a conducive climate for the agricultural sector to thrive and transform livelihoods at individual households, communities and the country at large. With almost 80% of the population employed in agriculture this cannot be over-emphasised. In spite of the opportunities in the sector, the level of preparedness for the farmers to take advantage of the available opportunities is still visibly low with majority of producers unable to participate in structured market systems. The available farmer organisations are also not able to play their rightful role in the agri-food markets. Ultimately the seemingly large opportunity for producers to earn sizeable incomes is not taken advantage of, and ultimately locking many of them into peasantry. NAAC as an agricultural sector-specific national co-operative union seeks to address this gap through strengthening the capacity of member co-operatives and thereby improve the participation of their member farmers into the agricultural systems for both input and output markets. NAAC aims at improving the position of producers in the agribusiness market ecosystem.

Strategic Objective: Agricultural co-operatives to have capacity to enable Ugandan producers to fully participate in agricultural input and output market systems.

Strategic Outcome: Agricultural co-operative members have better access to quality services, technology, inputs and markets which lead to better household incomes, hence sustainable poverty reduction.

Intervention Strategies shall include:

• Member co-operative capacity building to become professional business entities through internal systems development
• Market actor engagement so that they make adjustments to their procedures and policies so as to make markets more inclusive to poor co-operative farmers
• Donor engagement to convince them to adopt a MSD approach to supporting farmer cooperatives, and to invest in longer-term projects to pursue sustainable outcomes
• Policy dialogues with key stakeholders and decision makers
• Building and strengthening pathways for Access to finance for agricultural cooperatives and their members.