Integration of e-agriculture vital for Uganda

By Solomon Kalema Musisi

As a major agro-powerhouse, Uganda holds high capacity to amass regionally competitive per capita wealth to stand out as a model economy.

To achieve this, there is need to harmonise sector development plans with the technological advancements that can enhance efficiency at all points of the value chain, to upscale farmers’ benefit from their agro-products.

New innovations in agriculture by Ugandans from the Information Technology sector are vital in enabling farmer access to market information, weather forecast and updates along with links to agricultural information on the internet.

Contributions of private sector players and development partners to initiate progressive transition to a more responsive sector in as far as technological  development is concerned would improve livelihoods of smallholder farmers and help reduce the rural urban divide as the farmers would receive fairly the same information as their counterparts in the markets, majorly located in the urban centers.

Like agribusiness, the various aspects of e-agriculture should be viewed as a priority to incorporate in agricultural curricula with platform where students of engineering and information technology can interact more with agricultural students aiming at developing more packages for the agricultural sector.

With increased extension services aimed at building capacity and teaching rural farmers basic requirements for use of e-agriculture and all technological advancements, the sector, like it is already, would continue to evolve and gain more capacity to compete favourably with other economies.

The writer is a student Makerere University, School of Agricultural Sciences