Facilitating Smallholder Farmers’ Market Access
In the OIC Member Countries
47
stable , even during turbulent times, in part because of favorable endowments
of climate and land, and in part because of the generations-long strategy of self-reliance.
Historically, landlocked Uganda has been cut off from international markets. Exports have
depended heavily on the prices of coffee, tea, and cotton and on weather-related
production outcomes . Because most food was produced and consumed locally,
trade in food products was limited.
This situation is changing as internal and external trade respond to urbanization. Coffee
and tea still constitute a large share of exports, but other crops have begun to matter as
well . Although agricultural exports have declined as a share of merchandise
exports, the real value of agricultural exports from Uganda has rebounded to levels that
have not been seen since the late 1970s. Cereal imports, mostly of wheat and rice, have
also increased. Note that cereals are less central to diets in Uganda than in most OIC
member countries. The ratio of Uganda’s cereal imports relative to domestic production
ranged between 20 and 25 percent between 2004 and 2009, the last year for which data
are available.
FIGURE 23: VALUE OF AGRICULTURAL EXPORTS FROM UGANDA, 1961–2012
Source: FAOSTAT (FAO 2014).