Background to Access to Markets Programme
 Concept
Recent trends in trade development highlight the need of evaluating impact of trade development and market access facilitation to the level of business growth in terms of income and profit for the supported farmer. The growth of income at farmer level should become priority in the initiatives which support farmers with the aim of empowering them to become self sustaining.
In order to achieve this objective, a Dutch development organisation, Cordaid, supported an Access to Markets program of which the overall concept was based on the value chain approach where the actors in the chain know each other well and form stable, long-term relationships in which they support each other to mutual benefit. This means that all the actors in the chain should be able to make a sufficient profit. The role of the nine Ugandan partner organisations (NGO’s) in the project was to facilitate farmers in the creation of sustainable market linkages for their farmer groups and promote a good understanding of marketing their produce. This implied involving all other actors in the chain like traders, middlemen, retailers, wholesalers, input dealers and other supporting linkages with banks, microfinance institutions, local governments, NGOs, etc. The first step however was to train farmers in record keeping and farming as a business in order to furnish them with business management skills.
The AtM project carried out by the Cordaid partners was founded on a commercial basis. Projects that involve free inputs or other forms of handouts usually have a low chance of success, because problems will arise when farmers have to meet the full costs when the project ends. It also affects ownership of the project. If subsidies are used, ownership of activities by farmers is generally low as they reduce
|
|
AtM CPB Phase 1
The Access to Markets Capacity Building Program for the nine Cordaid partners in
Uganda commenced in March 2005. The project was formulated to contribute to one of
Cordaid´s policy themes for Uganda: “Access to Markets for a better guarantee to the
alleviation of poverty”. This theme was relatively new to Cordaid´s partner organisations
at that time and they identified that their staff required capacity building to enable them to
integrate this theme into their strategies and activities.
After thorough assessment of the partners
which identified their gaps, the program was designed to develop the technical capacity of the partners
in marketing. This enabled the partners to use this knowledge to improve the marketing of agricultural
produce and improve access of farmers to financial services for their agricultural production and
marketing needs.
The result of the first phase was a noticeable increased capacity of the partner organisation’s staff.
They gained a business like mentality and acquired knowledge and skills on Farming as a Business
(FaaB) and Value Chain Development (VCD).
However, staff did not manage to sufficiently transfer
knowledge on to the farmers and achieve any impact on the farmer’s side as more time was needed
for their knowledge and skills to trickle down to the farmers. Therefore, it was decided to develop
a second AtM phase in which the farmers would be targeted directly.
AtM CPB Phase II
Phase II of the AtM program started in July 2008 and focused mainly on commercialisation of the farmers
so that they would become competitive and establish sustainable rewarding market linkages. In this phase
the nine partner organisations of Cordaid developed an individual activity LogFrame (2008-2010) with
activities to initiate the commercialization of the farmers. The monitoring of the program also
focused on this aspect. By providing the farmers with tools to keep farm records, the idea was to
keep track of their progress.
Most of the partners are working through local farmer groups. These groups face numerous constraints
in marketing. These include inadequate business management skills, poor records management, market
analysis, due diligence, business contracting, and market information analysis, poor organisation for
marketing and value addition and lack of appropriate business financing mechanisms or general business
management. Others include inhibiting policies and poor quality products.
Therefore, the overall
objective of AtM CBP II was to develop and facilitate partners in making business like interventions
for the local farmer groups to effectively access markets for their produce.
The evaluation shows ” that while the overall objective has not yet been achieved, the project is on
the right track. There is clear evidence that the farmers are transitioning from subsistence farming,
where the goal of production is for food self sufficiency with a small surplus of between 25- 50% sold
to cover mainly non-food household needs, to semi-commercial where farmers are already food secure and
their goal in farming is increasingly for business purposes. This has been demonstrated by increased
investments indicated by expansion of production units, increased use of improved inputs which in
most cases have contributed to improved production and productivity.”
Role of FIT Uganda Ltd
FIT Uganda Ltd is a business development consultancy company. It provides capacity building and
facilitation support to small and medium enterprises across Uganda. For both phases FIT Uganda
acted as a process facilitator in linking farmers to sustainable market and as a BDS advisor. FIT
was overall responsible for project coordination and provided technical assistance and project
management. During the first phase FIT organised trainings for the staff of the partners, gave
technical assistance and provided information. In the second phase the focus was not so much
on trainings of the partners but on coaching them in working with the farmers and provide them
with information and tools (manuals, M&E database, templates).
FIT Uganda Ltd also played the role of budget holder. Partners handed in workplans together with a
detailed budget for the activities they wanted to carry out. In the second phase, the workplans were
based on the 2-year activity LogFrame which targeted activities with farmers. These LogFrames were
developed in the interim period between the first and the second phase of the project with the help
of an external consultancy firm.
|
Registered User
