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As Uganda joined the rest of the world in celebrating International Women's Day on Friday, the critical role of women in the agriculture sector was highlighted.

This year's celebration is themed around accelerating gender equality through women economic empowerment.

Women feature prominently in agricultural production, right from planting and weeding all the way to harvesting.

Those engaged in animal husbandry take part in tethering as well as grazing animals.

But in their quest to achieve economic empowerment, women in agriculture are faced with such challenges as lack of machinery, animal feed scarcity as well as poor-quality seed food crops.

Others who are engaged in zero grazing often have to look for grass and chop it into pieces to feed their animals. This is back-breaking work that can lead to injuries while handling blades.

With all these challenges in mind, the National Agriculture Research Organization (NARO) says it has developed women-friendly machinery for them to ease their agricultural work.

Speaking during the national celebrations in Katakwi, NARO director-general Dr Yona Baguma offered examples.

“As NARO we have come up with a forage chopper to give this lady or woman a chance to prepare feeds for a cow within a short time," he said.

"When shelling maize, it takes almost a whole day for one woman to shell one bag of maize, but with the NARO maize sheller, this lady can shell a bag of maize in less than an hour.

Motorised maize sheller at work. (Credit: Prossy Nandudu)

"Rice shelling also takes two days but with this rice sheller, they can shell in a short time."

The machines are fabricated at NARO’s mechanization centre at Namalere in Wakiso district.

Baguma said that for easy access to the machines, NARO will take them closer to the women through its affiliate research institutions in different parts of the country.

For instance, for the eastern region, farmers can access the machinery from the Serere-based National Semi Arid Resources Research Institute (NaSARRI).

The other institutes are Nabuin ZARDI for Karamoja region and Buginyanya ZARDI for Bugisu sub-region.

Access to seed

Baguma also said NARO plans to increase access to quality seed through a seed multiplication hub.

This hub has a distribution system through which farmers will be in position to access quality seed.

The hub will be guided by NARO's commercial arm, NARO Holdings Limited, through which quality seed can be accessed by seed companies for multiplication.