Enhancing Capacity for Agricultural Research and Training in Gulu University (ECART)

Sector

Agriculture

Project budget

The maximum budget for this project is € 1.5 million.

Organisations

This project has been developed by Gulu University. The tender for this project expired on 25 October 2011.

Nuffic has awarded this tender to the International Centre for development oriented Research in Agriculture (ICRA), which has formed a consortium with the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) and the Natural Resources Institute (NRI).

Project description

The overall objective of this project is to enable Gulu University to effectively contribute to food security improvement in Northern Uganda through agricultural skills development and applied research.

Northern Uganda suffered a twenty-year political insurgency, which shattered the livelihood of local communities. Agricultural productivity is low and despite the high number of agricultural households (estimated at 84%), one in five households live on one meal a day.

The main causes of the low agricultural productivity are:

• high pest and disease prevalence
• harsh weather conditions (especially drought)
• high post-harvest losses
• poor quality and low value addition
• a weak extension system
• poor natural resource management
• low technology adoption

More capacity and stonger linkages needed

Gulu University is the only institution of higher learning in Northern Uganda that offers agricultural training programmes. Its student-farmer extension programme is designed to not only improve skills among students and farmers, but also community access to extension services.

However, the programme has yet to produce tangible results, due to:

• inadequate research and training capacity;
• weak linkages between Gulu University researchers and other agricultural research institutions, technology developers and local communities.

This NICHE project intends to contribute to addressing these gaps by:

• developing and implementing relevant agricultural training programmes;
• increasing the capacity to conduct agricultural research;
• further developing and strengthening outreach and extension services.

Gender and labour market needs

Finally, the project aims to:

• strengthen female participation in agricultural training and skills development;
• ensure that Gulu University's training programmes became more responsive to labour market demands.