Improving Agricultural Market Performance:
Developing Agricultural Market Information Systems
90
7. UGANDA CASE STUDY
7.1 INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND Agriculture is of strategic importance to the Ugandan economy. Official data indicates that in
2015 the sector accounted for 25.4% of GDP and 40% of export earnings. Though the services
sectors accounted for 51.9% of GDP during that year, it employed only 23.7% of total labour
force compared to far higher contribution to employment of 71.9% by agriculture. The
agricultural sector also makes a very significant contribution to the reduction of poverty,
especially in rural areas (Hery A, 2016). The country has very diverse agro-climatic conditions
which makes it possible for it to produce a wide range of crops and livestock as shown in Table
9. Though it is a landlocked country, it is well-endowedwith large water bodies, the largest being
Lake Victoria (see Figure 38), making fisheries one of its important industries.
T ble 9: Uganda Agricultural Products in 2013Product type Crop/livestock Output per annum
(tonnes)* Main markets
Food crops Banana (locally called Matoke) 4,297,345 Mainly domestic markets.
Root crops (cassava & potato) 4,867,515
Maize 177,952 Domestic and regional
markets. Beans 24,495
Vegetables 8,850
Oil crops Sesame and sunflower 15,260
Oil palm 35,145 Domestic market.
Export crops
(also termed
cash crops) Coffee 169,040 Mainly international
export markets with
marginal sale into the
domestic market. Cotton 39,280
Tea 55,210
Cocoa 19,660
Tobacco 17,540
Sugarcane 93,665
Livestock and
fisheries
products Fish 418,600 International and local
markets.
Cattle* 11,434,795 Mainly domestic market.
Sheep and goats* 15,754,780
Poultry* 39,250,400
Pigs* 3,184,295
Source: Ministry of Agricultu e, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF) *In numbers (not tonnes).
7.1.1 LIBERALISATION: NEW OPPORTUNITIES BUT ALSO CHALLENGES IN
AGRICULTURAL MARKETS
When Uganda liberalised the agricultural sector in the 1980-90s, the government scaled back
its role in the marketing of the main export crops (sometimes referred to as traditional exports),
which are coffee, cotton and tea. Private exporters were allowed entry into the trade and major
multinational trading companies, which are vertically-integrated with local subsidiaries
emerged as the dominant trading companies (Butterworth and Kleih, 2005). One of the effects
of this liberalisation was that the marketing chain for these commodities was lengthened due to
entry by a range of middlemen with variable financial and technical capacity to aggregate at the