Uganda: Maps to Boost Livestock Sector
By Henry Neondo
Kampala, Uganda-----While only 0.8 million Ugandans live in areas where demand for milk is higher than supply, 3.5 million people however live in sub-counties identified as producing more milk than their residents consume. The problem however is that communities producing more milk do not know where markets are. But new maps released Monday by the World Resources Institute (WRI) aims to change all that.
The maps show milk surplus and deficit areas and highlight geographic differences in market opportunities for poor dairy farmers. They also compare for the first time 2005 poverty levels with livestock data from the 2002 population and housing census and the 2008 national livestock census.
“Seven out of ten households in Uganda own livestock, making it an integral part of Ugandans’ diet, culture, and income,” said Hope R. Mwesigye, Ugandan Minister of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries and co-author of Mapping a Better Future: Spatial Analysis and Pro-Poor Livestock Strategies in Uganda. “The maps are meant to guide the government’s future investments to reduce poverty while strengthening the livestock sector.”
Farming households with mixed crop and livestock production and pastoralists together own 90 percent of Uganda’s cattle and almost all of the country’s poultry, pigs, sheep, and goats.
Studies reveal that only 5.6 percent of the total cattle herd in Uganda is exotic or crossbred dairy cattle, 0.8 percent are exotic or crossbred beef cattle, and the remaining 93.6 indigenous breeds such as Ankole and Zebu/ Nganda. Only 10 percent of cattle-owning households in Uganda own exotic or crossbred dairy cattle.
Syda N.M. Bbumba, Uganda Minister of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, said, “examining the spatial relationships between poverty; livestock systems; location of livestock services, such as dairy cooling plants; and livestock disease hotspots can provide new evidence-based information to help craft more effective investments and poverty reduction efforts.”
The government is currently outlining priorities for the agricultural sector to support the new National Development Plan covering 2010/11 to 2014/15.
Under that plan, Uganda’s national livestock sector is expected to expand upon the priorities established. Stakeholders contributing to the drafting of the plan identified increasing farmers’ income as a key objective for the agricultural sector.
Bbumba said the past decade has seen significant advances in the range and quality of both livestock- and poverty-related data available to decision-makers. What has been lacking is an analytically sound approach to integrate the two sets of data in a manner that yields new insights into the poverty-livestock relationship.
While Uganda’s total agricultural output has declined, livestock figures have increased dramatically in the last decade due to strong domestic and regional demand for livestock products, according to the report.
For the majority of Ugandans, the agricultural sector (including crops, livestock, and fisheries) is the main source for livelihoods, employment, and food security.
According to the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) report of 2009, the agricultural sector provided 73.3 percent of employment in 2005/06, and most industries and services in the country are dependent on it.
Despite its significance, growth in agricultural output has declined from 7.9 percent in 2000/01 to 2.6 percent in 2007/08 with almost no growth in output in 2005/06 and 2006/07.
Experts say a combination of factors including drought, instability, pest outbreaks, and productivity and price declines for selected crops and commodities contributed to the decline.
Combined with faster growth in the services and industrial sectors, it has reduced agriculture’s share of Uganda’s gross domestic product (GDP). UBOS says agriculture’s contribution to GDP fell from 20.6 in 2004 to 15.6 percent in 2008, measured in constant 2002 prices.
“Increased livestock production carries both economic opportunities for Ugandans and greater risk for transmission of animal diseases,” said Nicholas Kauta, Commissioner of Livestock Health and Entomology at the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries. “The maps included in this report will help Uganda’s leaders understand market opportunities and, at the same time, target at-risk areas for disease outbreaks with appropriate health intervention plans.”
According to the authors of the maps, ensuring that government investments in the livestock sector benefit smallholders and high-poverty locations will require more evidence-based local planning supported by data, maps, and analyses.
They hope the information will help policymakers, dairy researchers and development agencies gauge market opportunities and invest in infrastructure where it is needed the most.
“By combining social data and livestock information and analyzing the map overlays, decision-makers from different sectors can work together to identify solutions to complex problems facing communities such as diseases that affect both people and livestock,” said Norbert Henninger, senior associate at WRI and co-author of the report.
John B. Male-Mukasa, executive director of the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, said, “Uganda’s government acknowledges the importance of livestock to the nation’s economic development and food security, and as part of its 2010-2015 National Development Plan, it plans to invest in improved livestock breeds, water infrastructure, and livestock land management. The maps in this report will be useful in identifying the regions where investment is needed most dearly.”
Mapping a Better Future is the third instalment in a series of publications using maps and spatial analysis to reduce poverty in Uganda, following two previous reports which targeted wetlands and water and sanitation.