Posted on April, 8, 2024 at 09:07 am
The Eastern Africa Green Council (EAGC) in collaboration with TradeMark Africa have launched a three-year program aimed at strengthening competitiveness in export-oriented staple food value chains in East Africa.
The project, launched in Kampala on Friday, April 5, that targets farmers, millers, green processors, and financial services providers is set to enhance the fundamentals of agricultural trade in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania with Kenya as the destination market while Tanzania and Uganda as suppliers due to this surplus production.
“When you look at countries like Uganda and Tanzania, they’re able to produce a lot of the whole range of cereals including soya at very competitive prices that then allows them to sell to some of the deficit countries like Kenya where total production of maize in a 12 month period against consumption. You realize that what Kenya consumes is more than what is produced, and so that gap is filled in through cross-border trade,” said Gerald Masila, the Executive Director at the Eastern African Grain Council.
Key among others, Masila said the project also aims at mobilising, training and equipping farmers with skills and the necessary technologies to join the grain trade chain.
“In this programme, we are going to address the various challenges that make it difficult for export of staple foods, one of them being the issue of aggregation to be able to aggregate sufficient quantities,” Mr Masila said.
“Secondly, is the issue of quality where we will address the quality standards, aflatoxin and other mycotoxin issues, to ensure that production is done using technologies such as aflasafe and others that address the aflatoxin situations, but also the handling of the grain from the farm to the storage and all through to the market so that it is not contaminated when it is in route to market,” he added.
Mr Masila added that they will also be providing solutions around trade finance.
“One of the challenges that is making difficult for farmer groups and SMEs in Uganda to export in the region is the lack of trade finance where they need finance to be able to aggregate pay off the farmers and trade out their products. We will through this project also be preserving jobs and creating more employment from the export-oriented trade that is going to be addressed,” he added.
Anna Nambooze, the Country Director for the Uganda –South Sudan program at Trademark Africa (TMA) said the UGX 7 billion project intends to establish and enhance an information hub to inform regional food balance sheets, influence national and regional food security policies, and cultivate an enabling regulatory environment for trade.
“We have co-created the program together with EAGC to be able to increase the staples trade, clean it up, increase productivity, and the general export from Uganda to the rest of the region. We hope to see increased quantities of trade in staples within the region but also see more organized and formalized trade,” Nambooze said.
With the participation of over sixty stakeholders from the staple grains value chain, the project aims to achieve multiple objectives. Foremost among them is the strengthening of farmer-operated grain business hubs (G-Hubs), leveraging technology to optimize grain production, quality, and trade.
Additionally, the initiative seeks to bolster enterprise-level capacities and institutional mechanisms to elevate Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) standards and quality compliance, thereby fostering increased export-oriented grain trade.
It also intends to establish and enhance an information hub to inform regional food balance sheets, influence national and regional food security policies, and cultivate an enabling regulatory environment for trade.
Dr Joshua Mutambi, the commissioner for processing and marketing in the Ministry of Trade and Cooperatives, said Uganda’s grain exports currently stand at around $500 million annually and the new project would help improve it.
“This project is very timely because now we know that the Uganda is favored by the climate whereby we have two seasons in a year but we have been having challenges accessing markets and this project is going to help the farmers, processors and traders, making sure that they are able to access the market through aggregating, storage and quality control,” he said.
“You are aware that we have the government programs like Emyooga and the Parish Development Model, which are increasing our agricultural production. As you have heard, our production is increasing year by year, which means that we need to add value and be able to access the markets and the farmers especially the challenges, they are facing handling different toxins and all these, so this project has come to make sure that we address this,” he added.
On his part, Mr Emmanuel Asiimwe, the country director of the Eastern African Grain Council, said the implementation of grain standards within the region is important.
“But we’ve been lacking capacity in terms of how best can we support the potential exporters or traders in grain and now with the work we are doing with Trade Africa to make sure that we strengthen the trade in staple foods in the region. One of them is not to do with the quantity only but also the quality,” he said.
The three-year project is being implemented with funding from the United States government, Feed the Future initiative through the USAID’s Economic Recovery and Reform Activity (ERRA) programme.
Source: PML Daily