Empowering the grassroots communities

The focus of this article is on the causes of the failed importation of the Danish model of Agricultural Associations into Uganda in 1992, in comparison to successes of the Danish cooperative movement.

By Massy-Moses Kasule

When the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF), were zealously promoting the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) during the mid 1980s, the same institutions encouraged and promoted a parallel effort of the creation of self-reliant and self-supporting agricultural associations in developing countries (refer to my article in MS Newsletter July 2008, p. 22).

Massy Moses Kasule - Photo by Vibeke Quaade

Between 1988-93, Ugandan farmers were participating in a yearly agricultural competition organised by the government Winners were rewarded with agricultural tours to agricultural countries like Denmark, USA, UK, Zimbabwe and Kenya, where the visiting Ugandan farmer realized that their counterparts, for example in Denmark, were highly organised in numerous farmers associations despite their few numbers.

They therefore requested the Ministry of Agriculture to assist them in forming farmer’s organisation. In response, the Ministry, through its district agricultural officers, invited three model farmers from each of the then 39 districts, plus representatives of agro-industries. The selected farmers formed the core membership of the Uganda National Farmers Association (UNFA) established on 22nd January 1992.

Denmark joins in to re-organise the cooperative movement in Uganda
With the unequivocal success of the agricultural cooperative movement in Denmark, the Danish cooperative movement took the initiative in successfully organising Ugandan farmers. Project offices were set up in Kampala, from where civil servant

consultants were recruited through the line ministry of agriculture to implement the project. DANIDA undertook the responsibility of assisting in setting up UNFA, and helping the elected or rather appointed UNFA’s National Executive Committee (NEC) to conduct a vigorous countrywide campaign to have the association established in all the districts in the country.

The Danes also assisted in establishing a trading and business arm of UNFA to help farmers acquire inputs on how to market their produce. Departments were established to coordinate the district branches of UNFA.

At district level, selected model farmers were invited to form district farmer’s executive committees as branches of UNFA. These branches later became independent following an amendment of UNFA’s constitution in 1998.

During the association’s 10th anniversary celebrations in 2002, the name of the association was changed to Uganda National Farmers Federation (UNFFE). The reason was given as “making the organization more embracing and open to more farmers associations to join”. Presently, UNFFE claims to have 70 districts-based agriculture and commodity organisations, and membership in excess of 220,000 households (New Vision, 28^th October 2008).

By 2003, DANIDA had contributed a whopping DKK42 million (Ush14 billion) to set up the Association. According to DANIDA’s evaluation, excerpted on the next page, the project is now believed not to have lived up to the initial objective of becoming a mouthpiece of many indigenous Ugandan farmers.

Top-bottom is bound to fail
Why did the Danish cooperative model fail in Uganda? There are plenty of reasons.

The Danish model was born out of small farmers’ grassroots associations rather than the creation of a national organisation first, and then small grassroots associations later.

In Uganda, the initial selected model farmers were already well-off and established, and as such, the organisation was almost forced on them, especially those who had not been part of the trips abroad.

UNFA was not started according to the actual and researched farmers’ interests, e.g. the different crops and or daily activities in their local settings. Although the constitution was amended in 1998 to give the district farmers organisational autonomy, structures were dictated upon these district associations by UNFA, thus retaining the top-bottom approach.

NEC members could also be part of the District Executive Councils (DECs), a potential source of conflict of interest, as UNFFE is still calling the shots centrally and having influence in requesting the district associations to be part of the government’s agricultural programmes like, National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS), Prosperity for All (Bonna Baggagawaale), growing upland rice, Savings and Credit Cooperatives (SACCOs) etc.

In other words, many mistakes were made. But they all point to the top-bottom approach which was used in the Ugandan context compared to the bottom-up approach in Denmark when the agricultural cooperative movement was created in the 1800s.

In my next article in the series, “Empowering the grassroots communities”, I will be looking at the success stories of the Danish cooperative movement, lessons learned and what can be done in Uganda’s case to revive the cooperative movement.

Massy-Moses Kasule, Roving Financial Management Advisor.
Email: kasulemm@hotmail.com

“When things work in Denmark…………

In 1992, Denmark began supporting a completely new type of agricultural advisory role in Uganda. The advisory role was to anchor on self-reliant and self-supporting agricultural associations, which were the absolute engines of unquestionable development in the Danish agriculture sector.

Justifiably the initiative came from the Danish cooperative movement and was positively received in Uganda, also given the fact that the earlier experiences with agricultural advisory efforts in the country had been catastrophic. The initiative was centred on a system that was being zealously promoted by the World Bank, whereby civil servant consultants trained and visited the farmers.

The objective was that the newly created agricultural associations would have become self-supporting and spread all over the country within a period of five years. However, despite the Danish support of Danish Kroners 42 million up to the year 2003, the newly created agricultural associations have not led to any success. These have not constituted themselves into being the mouthpiece of Uganda’s many agricultural farmers, but rather a mouthpiece for the current political regime, and the associations have continued to depend and survive solely on outside support. Therefore, since 1999, there have been some concerted efforts to reduce the number of created agricultural associations.”