1. Introduction1

¹ Germina Ssemogerere, Arsen Balihuta and Owor Adipa made significant contributions to this study.

Agricultural policy is at the heart of the new poverty-focused macroeconomic policy in Uganda. Women are central to agricultural production in the country, and agriculture is critically important to women’s well-being. It is therefore crucial that Ugandan agricultural policy become more gender-aware, after having long been “gender-blind”. The project on which this paper reports sought to contribute to building national capacity for gender analysis in Uganda through a workshop and research process.

The Uganda study selected the promotion of non-traditional agricultural exports (NTAE), one of the keystones of current macroeconomic policy, for further field-based study. Increasing agricultural production is crucial for Ugandan development, and NTAE promotion is now considered an important agricultural intensification strategy, given the demonstrated risks of over-reliance on world markets for the traditional cash crops-coffee, tea and cotton (World Bank, 1996). However, the implications of gender structures for the success of the NTAE promotion strategy, and the implications of this policy shift for gender relations and women’s wellbeing, are not well understood. The Uganda study sought to provide information which would contribute toward “engendering” agricultural policy. It addressed two broad sets of questions concerning the efficiency and equity of the NTAE policy. First, how will the NTAE promotion strategy be affected by current gender relations, including the gender division of labour and control over resources? What factors are necessary if the desired supply response to policy initiatives is to materialize? Second, how will the NTAE strategy, as currently conceived, affect women’s well-being and their standing in the household and in society? What is required so that the NTAE promotion strategy not only contributes to aggregate production, but does so without adversely affecting any groups in society? Besides reviewing the implications of recent data and research for these questions, the project carried out participatory rural appraisal exercises and conducted two village surveys in order to address these questions.

This report is organized as follows. Section 2 gives an overview of the analytical approach taken by the project. Section 3 provides information on the national context in Uganda, including the agricultural sector economic policy, and gender issues and public policy. Section 4 provides information on the rural sector in Uganda, including gender roles in agriculture. Section 5 discusses macroeconomic policy in Uganda, and the potential for and the constraints on an agricultural export-led growth strategy. Section 6 presents findings from the field studies regarding factors limiting productivity in the smallholder sector. Section 7 presents some conclusions.