Agribusiness Enterprise Development-Butaleja Adopted Village Model

Challenges Entered:

Market Access, Market intelligence gathering, community mobilization, collectiveÂ storage, quality assurance & value chain management. Farmers throughÂ the District Farmers Forum,DistrictÂ Local Governemtn, Farmers &Â The Harris GroupÂ Consultant will interact to develop the value-chain. Through virtual Communities, there will be interactive learning to replicare whole models or model elements.Â Rockford Harris Group, is a group of young and innovative professionals mobilized through virtual communities to share information on community development. Using the internet through discusison forums we have mobilized professionals willing to grant part of their annual on our projects for community building. Butaleja is an "adopted village" as model. Rural communities in Uganda lack professionals services given their lack of communication services, poor road networks, no electricity, water and even health services are poor. These communities by nature are not attractive for business investments and therefore require public intervention or civil society intervention.Virtual Communities have proved low-cost, quick and effective in mobilizing professionals communities for community building. They have facilitative interactive learning and model replication and that is what Buteleja Project is about.

What else have you done in this area of work?

A database of Profesionals has been developed and expets mobilized using internet virtual communities.

20 professionals volunteers have been cycled in Butaleja. 175 enteprise groups have been formed with a total of 1993 farmers and 85 TOT trained.

1 community Radio has been crafted into the project on a voluntary basis to relay market intelligence information to rural farmers.

SMS/GPRS Technology infrastructure under development to facilitate mobile communication through SMS on markets, weather, government policy trends to farmers in local languages.

Project Details

Project url:

http://www.rockfordharris.com/agribizness

Project video:

Project RSS:

http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTARD/0,,contentMDK:20445164~pa...

Project Assessment

Financial support:

Project has financial support

Project goals:

Rural farmers in Butaleja District will commercialize their agricultural activities. Farmers will integrate GPRS,Mobile SMS technology and Community Radio for market intelligence sharing on agro-enteprise. The project through strategic public-private partnerships aims to revamp the defunct public warehouses to establish the Warehouse Reciept System(WRS) to facilitate collective storage of produce, market information sharing and thus improved incomes for poor rural farmers.The liberalization of the agricultural sector in Uganda resulted into the collapse of the cooperative movement which was a public vehicle for collective marketing and transportation of enterprises with the support of government. Farmers relied on this infrastructure such as government silos, warehouses and the transport chain with a one stop-center for export called the Uganda Commodities Exchange(UCE). Economic liberalization rendered public intervention and therefore these parastatals in irrelevant living farmers to the dictates of the market economy. Uganda is a land-locked country.80% of the citizens are rural-based and engaged in subsistence agriculture. The net effect of lack of market access has aggravated poverty. It is the most vulnerable cohort of the population that requires strategic interventions to stimulate enterprises and market development.

Identified Obstacles:

Professional Volunteers, Financial & Infrastructural Equipment.

Location

Tororo

Uganda

Submitted by zyz0 on June 25, 2008 - 2:30am

Hard times

Submitted by JamesR on March 14, 2009 - 12:21am.

Most of us suffering in rough times. This is what we call POVERTY in all things. It's so hard to get on your feet when you know you have no money or good credit to lean on. Well there is always a good opportunity and luck if we just trust in our skills and pray to God. Why frown if you can be optimist and smile in everything bad happens to you. Just be thankful because there are still more blessings that you might consider. For those who in business world that suffer in global recession and low stock market lets be positive about it. Go on be more hardworking and think techniques to survive. The best way to get through a rough patch is to put on a grin, and keep plugging away, which is how people all over the world have gotten through hard times.

Finally the Senate has

Submitted by PeytonM on April 24, 2009 - 12:52am.

Finally the Senate has agreed and ratified the secession. There are people who have talked about Texas secession for decades. This time, the cry for Texas secession is getting a little bit louder. Governor Rick Perry has released a statement in the wake of the numerous "tea parties" over taxes that have broken out all over the nation. He's more or less intimated that it might get brought up later, and it's doubtful there will be military loans for new border construction. (If they try, they won't likely succeed.) The talks of Texas secession are more likely a prompt to get the Federal Government to repair credit with certain factions.