SMART AGRIC DILEMMA! Sorghum Farmers Put Shs1.3tn UCSATP Project to the Test

KAMPALA — Bosses of the multi-billion-dollar Uganda Climate-Smart Agriculture Transformation Project (UCSATP) appear to have found themselves in a tricky agricultural catch-22 — after sending researchers to Teso to find out whether the climate-smart technologies being pushed on sorghum farmers are actually working.

The project, funded by the World Bank to the tune of US$350 million (about Shs1.3 trillion) and implemented under the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries, is designed to help Ugandan farmers withstand increasingly unpredictable weather.

But before celebrating the success of the climate-smart revolution, researchers have been dispatched to the Teso sub-region to ask a rather basic question: Are the technologies actually helping farmers?

The research could leave project bosses with a difficult answer.

If the technologies are working, farmers should be more resilient to drought and other climate shocks.