Partners:

CGIAR Centres – CIAT and IITA
Community Enterprise Development Organisation, Uganda
Local radio stations, Uganda
BBC, London.

Problem:

The need for market and technical information in rural communities is unquestionable.  Up-to-date market information improves farmers’ negotiating power and facilitates spatial and temporal arbitrage of commodities. Conventional means of disseminating information, particularly in rural areas, often fail to achieve significant impact because of lack of resources, ability of extension agents to transfer appropriate messages, and poor infrastructure.  Rural FM radio stations are well placed to provide communities with relevant information in remote areas which lack communication infrastructure

Achievements:

The project’s main purpose was to develop and promote strategies that improve poor rural communities’ access to markets. Focusing on farmers’ market information needs and their ability to make use of information, the project produced a mix of policy, technical and product outputs, which fed into an information delivery model (e.g. combination of training and broadcast of radio spots). In this context, the following outputs were produced:

1. Different versions of an “Advice Manual for the Organisation of Collective Marketing Activities by Small-scale Farmers” were published and disseminated by both the Natural Resources Institute and the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture.  The manual was tested in various districts of Uganda and designed to assist the staff of service-providers to advise farmers on using group marketing strategies. In particular, the latter are seen as crucial in enabling farmers to make better use of market information.


2. The radio series “Together to Market” is a series of 10 radio ‘spots’ to promote group marketing by farmers, which was produced by BBC, NRI, IITA/Foodnet, Radio Lira, PMA Secretariat (available as CDs). It ‘brings to life’ the main points and issues which are highlighted as important in forming farmers’ groups and in marketing as a group in the manual, using case studies from other parts of Uganda.

As part of the making of the programme, on-the-job training was provided for a group of 12 producers from different radio stations, some of whom were subsequently involved in the translation into other languages (i.e. Ateso, Luo, Lunyoro, and Lusoga).

3. Improved knowledge in the form of studies / surveys that were also used for dissemination purposes, mainly in Uganda.