Correlating NAADS Agricultural Initiatives in the Tea Sector and the Industrialisation Potential for Community Transformation and Poverty Reduction in South-Western Uganda (2015–2025)

Abstract

Community transformation and poverty alleviation are central to every country's holistic development agenda as emphasized by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs, 2000–2015) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs, 2015–2030). Since 1986, Uganda has implemented a range of political, economic, and social interventions aimed at fostering community transformation and poverty reduction. However, these efforts have yielded varying levels of success. Among these initiatives was the enactment of the Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP) in 1997 which led to the establishment of the National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS) in 2001. NAADS was designed to be a key instrument for promoting agricultural investment as a means of transforming communities and alleviating poverty given agriculture’s dominance in Uganda’s economy. Although NAADS has recorded considerable achievements in enhancing agricultural production, it has underperformed in promoting agro-processing, an omission that has limited its overall impact (Fiala and Apell, 2017). This study investigated the extent to which opportunities arising from the increased distribution of tea seedlings and the subsequent expansion of tea farming have been leveraged to establish value-addition enterprises, such as green leaf and processed black tea industrial facilities in the Greater Bushenyi districts, one of the primary beneficiaries of NAADS. Employing a descriptive research design and a mixed-methods approach, data were collected from key stakeholders in the agriculture sector at both district and national levels. The findings indicate that the government’s goal of community transformation and poverty alleviation has been hampered by the failure to integrate agro-industrialization into the design and implementation of NAADS. The study concludes that it is only through coordinated, well-financed, and strategically implemented efforts that Uganda can realize the full transformative potential of its tea sector and agriculture more broadly.