Farmers in Uganda Access Timely Market Information

Kampala, 11 June 2009 – The International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD) and SNV Netherlands Development Organisation will work together on the Market Access Programme called Rural Information Systems (RIS) centres in Uganda. An agreement for this initiative was signed last month by Anne Mutta, SNV Country Director Uganda and Caroline Figuères, Managing Director of IICD.

The objective is to contribute to the increase of national incomes by empowering organised farmer groups to access relevant markets and marketing information that will enable them to make informed pricing and bulking decisions as well as providing timely information to the various value chain actors to strengthen the different segments of the selected value chains. This would be done by putting in place a system that will support the collection, collation, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information on agricultural commodity markets using Rural Information System. 

To realise the Market Access Programme, selected farmer groups are trained on how to collect and disseminate market information and other types of information along the farming value chains. This is backed by a computer supported database that mainly enables collection, storage and dissemination of information on agricultural commodity markets and production. It is a two way information system, where farmers send out own information on production and also receive market information using the internet. The cooperation has a total target of 30 RIS centres of which 19 are already established. The target beneficiaries are 90,000 households. Success stories in this model already exist with farmers having increased access to markets through the timely information and improved bargaining powers due to access to information. 

In the collaboration SNV is responsible for identifying the beneficiaries of the programme, giving technical support through its advisors, developing the day to day strategic direction while IICD provides hardware like computers and accessories, technical backup and strategic support towards the implementation of the programme. The collaboration between SNV and IICD in Uganda also includes knowledge development, sharing and dissemination of lessons learned. 

Prior to the signed agreement, SNV and IICD have already been working as partners in Uganda since 2006. The Market Access for Rural Access programme is a replication of a successful pilot project funded by IICD and developed in collaboration with the Uganda Commodity Exchange (UCE) in which farmers in three pilot centres were introduced to the rural information system model.

For more information on IICD's partners in this project: