The phase II of the East Africa dairy development project is going to be a five year (2014-2018) dairy sector intervention designed to help 136,000 smallholder farm families to achieve improved livelihoods. It’s going to be implemented in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania by four international non-profit organisations which include the world agroforestry Centre (ICRAF); International livestock research institute (ILRI), Heifer international, Technoserve (TNS), and African breeders’ services (ABS) as has been the case of phase I.
In Uganda EADD phase II will primarily focus on achieving sustainability for phase I dairy hubs, while testing the approach in a few new areas. The project will also look at replication of the hub model for scalability, ensure gender equity and farmer sustainability among other things. It will target 43,000 families from 33 dairy producer organisations covering three milk sheds of southwestern, Central and Eastern Uganda.
The phase II of the project was launched on friday24, January 2014 at Kampala Serena Hotel by the State Minister for Agriculture, Animal industries and Fisheries, Hon Bright Rwamirama. He thanked the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation for supporting Heifer International with a 25.5 million dollar grant to improve lives of smallholder farmers in the East African region. The minister reiterated that the work of the project is in line with the National development plan strategy of increasing household incomes and modernizing agriculture. He further mentioned that the per capita milk consumption of Ugandans is at 50 litres which is far below the FAO recommended standard of 200 litres and therefore this creates a potentially big market locally which the project can take advantage of.
“Out of USD 25.5 Million , Uganda is going to take 10.9m, almost half of the grant and therefore this calls for more commitment and hard work among key players in the sector “,said the acting country director for heifer international, Mr. William Matovu. He also pointed out that the EADD project is the first dairy value chain project t implemented at scale in Uganda and that the hub approach is nearing adoption into national systems.
