The Monitoring and Analysing Food and Agricultural Policies (MAFAP) team of the Agrifood Economics Division at FAO and the FAO Uganda Office held a high-level meeting on 29 March 2023 with officials from Uganda’s National Planning Authority (NPA) to present and discuss the key findings from a series of FAO reports on prioritizing investments in food and agriculture and how they can shape future policymaking.

During the bilateral meeting between FAO and the NPA – Uganda’s long-term policy planning body – Marco V. Sánchez, Deputy Director of FAO Agrifood Economics Division, introduced the findings from the first study and computable general equilibrium model on how, through a series of scenarios, public investments promoting agricultural productivity in Uganda could drive growth in agrifood production, with positive impacts on the economy, well-being, and poverty reduction in rural areas.

Discussion then centred around the second report on the geographical prioritization of commodity-specific investments to identify districts with high agro-ecological potential, that are also far from their potential and have high levels of poverty and therefore where investments are likely to have the highest impact.

Finally, the third and final report in the package on prioritizing agrifood investments showed NPA policymakers bottom-up insight from Ugandan farmers and district agriculture officers which investments are needed the most to increase productivity for a number of important commodities in the districts identified in the second study.

The third study, conducted by the Economic Policy Research Centre in Uganda on behalf of FAO,  surveyed famers and local experts and asked them to rank the following eight investment areas from the most pressing to less urgent: seeds/breeds, fertilizers/veterinary drugs, mechanization, irrigation, extension, research and development (R&D), roads, and electrification) per commodity and district. The five commodity-district pairings were: millet in Soroti; maize in Serere; cassava in Lira; goats in Kibaale; and coffee in Masaka).

The meeting in Kampala came at a critical time when Uganda is reviewing the success and lessons learned from its current Third National Development Plan (NDP III) 2020/21–2024/25, and as it gears up to draft its next 5-year Plan, the NDP IV for 2025/26–2029/30.

Joining the bilateral meeting were 14 NPA officials and several members of NPA’s management team including Deputy Executive Chairperson Prof. Obwoya Samuel Kinyera, Deputy Executive Director Charles Oleny Ojok and Director of Development Planning Dr. Asuman Gulooba, as well representatives from the FAO Uganda Office, Dominque Reumkens, and MAFAP’s focal point in Uganda, Nana Nkuingoua.

Before a follow-up meeting takes place in the coming weeks, the NPA will review the policy evidence from FAO to identify areas that could shape the NDP IV. The Authority will also prepare proposals on areas/topics where further analysis could be needed to assess the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on agricultural development, as well as a cost-benefit analysis of any proposed interventions in the agricultural sector.

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