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CHAPTER 1 Introduction


Background


he importance of agricultural extension in agricultural and rural devel- opment is widely known. Thus it is not surprising that agricultural extension has attracted substantial investment of public resources since the 1950s, when national agricultural advisory services began to be for- mally established by governments (Anderson 2007), and has returned strongly to the international development agenda (World Bank 2007a). In Uganda, agricultural extension is perhaps the most hotly debated subject, particu- larly following implementation of the National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS) program in 2001. The NAADS program, which is a key strategy to implementing the government’s poverty reduction and national development plan, was conceived as a move away from the top-down approach, which is publicly funded, with services provided by public agents, to a demand-driven approach, which is largely publicly funded, with services provided by the pri- vate sector. The program targets the development and use of farmer institu- tions and in the process empowers them to procure enterprise-based advisory services, manage linkages with marketing partners, and conduct monitoring and evaluation of the advisory services they receive from the private sector (Uganda, NAADS Secretariat 2001).


T


By end of the 2006–07 financial year, the program, whose goal is increas- ing the proportion of market-oriented production, had been extended to 545 subcounties (about 83.1 percent of the total subcounties in Uganda at the time) from the initial 24 subcounties where it was launched. About 1,622 contracts with private-sector service providers had been signed, more than 40 enterprises had been promoted, and about 40,000 farmer groups and 716,000 farmers (representing 20 percent of national farming households) had received services from the program (Uganda, NAADS Secretariat 2007). Implementation of the NAADS program, however, has not been without inter- ference, especially in recent times. In September 2007, for example, the president of Uganda suspended the program, claiming misuse of funds; the program was reinstated in January 2008 (Sunday Monitor 2008). Members of


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