Improving Agricultural Market Performance:
Developing Agricultural Market Information Systems
93
service provider and received return messages with details of the price information requested
(per crop and per market). The dissemination was paid for by FOODNET with the available
donor funding. When direct funding ended the staff involved took over the operation and
continue to provide the service, this time as FARMGAIN.A brief assessment of FOODNET in 2004 showed that, despite being widely acknowledged in the
literature o IS at the time, very few market participants used it in Uganda (Onumah and
Linton 2004 . Very few farmers were aware of it and the traders who knew about its existence
did not cons it. The explanation was that they could obtain a more up-to-date information on
prices by calling people in their informal network who include agents and farmers in rural
communities as well as other traders. Even members of the Uganda Grain Traders Association
(UGTA), who were emerging as formal grain traders in the country, did not consult FOODNET
except when they were preparing bids to supply grains to WFP for its relief operations. Other
users of information from FOODNET are policymakers.Other IGMIS platforms existed in Uganda along with FOODNET include a MIS run by the Uganda
Cooperative Alliance (UCA), which is a national federation of cooperatives in Uganda. The UCA
set up this parallel systemmainly because their members were not satisfied with FOODNET and
the Management was keen to establish a more reliable MIS. Under their system, field officers of
UCA collect information on buyers as well as prices from markets in 10 districts as well as
markets in Kampala. This information is collated at the head office of the UCA in Kampala. Staff
at both the district level and at the head office dedicated 15-20% of their time to work on MIS.
The information is disseminated via mobile phones and is updated 1-2 times per week. The same
information is also posted on notice boards hosted by the Area Cooperative Enterprises (ACAs).
The ACAs act as marketing units for groups of cooperatives and employ a manager, who uses
information from the MIS to negotiate sales on behalf of the members. The initiative was funded
by the Swedish Cooperative Centre.Running parallel to the MIS run by the UCA was another which was set up by the Ministry of
Tourism, Trade and Industry (MTTI) under the Area-based Agricultural Modernisation Project
(AAMP). The parallel MIS was set up under the project, which was funded by IFAD, though the
MTTI was the host Ministry for the UCA. Market information, mainly in the form of commodity
prices, was collected by the MTTI’s Trade and Commerce Officers in the sub-counties (divisions
within districts in Uganda). The information was collected from major markets in 13 districts.
Initially, the information was disseminated by means of national as well as local radio
broadcasts. This, however, proved too expensive and the operators switched publications in
local newspapers as well as posting of bulletins on notice boards. The cost was covered under
the IFAD-funded AAMP.The two MIS platforms which run parallel to FOODNET did not fare any better. Beyond the
narrow audience of the direct programme stakeholders, there is no evidence that other players
including especially farmers and traders actually used the information they disseminated.
26 The assessment was undertaken as part of a review of factors which hampered the operations of the then Uganda
Commodity Exchange.