Possible partnerships with UAA that create win-win situations include:

• 1

  Development partners and international institutions

  Can benefit from UAA by positioning themselves in a partnership (leverage) that has an explicit mandate to innovate and develop knowledge, on how best to advance the agribusiness industry in Uganda, which has significant poverty reduction and job creation potential.

  Donor-funded agribusiness programs that focus on primary production, input improvements, and rural livelihoods, etc., also benefit directly from UAA’s policy and advocacy work, as well as the development of value chains. UAA coordinates initiatives with such programs to ensure a seamless quality supply chain, to meet the growing demand for domestically produced products.

• 2

  Corporations, wholesalers, or retailers and other agribusinesses

  Have a unique opportunity to position themselves at the forefront of economic development and participate in the development of the agribusiness industry.

  • UAA directly benefits major corporations that are seeking strong local partners.
  • UAA also actively seeks supply chain development opportunities that, on one hand, provide reliable, good quality agricultural products, while in turn providing agricultural enterprises with a reliable market.
  • Partnering with UAA can soften the landing into new markets, given UAA’s network of key stakeholders who know the local and international landscape, as well as potential business partners who share the same sense of corporate social responsibility.
  • Participating organisations also derive useful ideas and information utilising UAA as a “window” on business development, business intelligence, fostering inclusive business models, technology and emerging issues affecting the industry.
  • These organisations also benefit from follow-up programs including regional meetings, UAA’s promotional programmes for its members and partners activities etc.
  • UAA enables companies to access the technical capacity needed to successfully advocate for and help drive through necessary policy, legislative and regulatory reforms.
  • Furthermore, through UAA’s advocacy and policy work, private agribusinesses (e.g., traders, agricultural commodity and input traders, processors) in Uganda will face fewer policy and regulation-based disincentives to invest in the value chains within which they seek to operate, leading to expanded local agribusiness capacity and operations, and ultimately, expanded access for smallholders to key markets.
  • Increased access to lending from financial institutions.
  • Access to expert knowledge and research on new and improved agricultural practices, improved agricultural input.
  • A more efficient, collaborative agribusiness industry where UAA helps all components to work in complementary fashion.

• 3

  Financiers
  • Financiers that target agribusiness enterprises have the opportunity to work with UAA to test out new products applicable for small and medium innovative enterprises that do not yet meet the very high collateral and other requirements. UAA also provides linkages between agribusinesses and partnering financial institutions. UAA understands the needs of financial institutions and can offer these institutions a lower-risk client pool that has already been vetted for their growth-potential and that receives continuous technical assistance to enhance and manage growth.
  • Partnering financial institutions can work with UAA to provide “Patient” seed capital to enable entrepreneurs to prove their business models, build a financial track record and achieve a scale that makes the enterprise less risky and more attractive to commercial financiers. The patient capital can very often be used for market research, capital equipment, sourcing of raw materials, cash flow bridging, packaging, product testing, etc.
  • The critical role that UAA plays in bridging the gap in understanding, between financial institutions and the agriculture sector, signals the opening of a new profitable market place to the finance sector.
  • UAA ‘s thorough understanding of the agribusiness industry (through its membership), its practical understanding of the challenges and proactive knowledge of ways to mitigate them by sharing risks and capacity building, removes earlier lending blind spots to the sector, protects the financial institutions from risk, while creating broader finance investment opportunities that can be taken advantage of.
  • UAA advocates and supports the development of a conducive agriculture financing policy, legislative and regulatory environment, which supports innovations in, and delivery of, agricultural financial products and services.

• 4

  Academic and research institutions
  • Researchers can work with UAA in developing partnerships/ closer ties with agribusinesses/ industries, which would translate research lab innovations into products for the market. Researchers therefore benefit from information and knowledge of real industry needs, while entrepreneurs benefit from knowledge that meets their business needs.
  • Additionally, academia and research institutions can partner with UAA on creating and executing the critical Monitoring & Evaluation, as well as impact assessment framework and on conducting research on critical issues of importance to the advancement of innovation and entrepreneurship in agribusiness.

• 5

  Farm / Firm-level organisations
  • Can work with UAA to strengthen farmers’ positions within value chains with a particular focus on smallholder farmers, supporting them in leveraging market opportunities, access to finance, and timely access to market information, quality inputs among others.

   

  • These can also work with UAA in advocating with a single voice to drive through necessary policy, legislative and regulatory reforms.

• 6

  Government
  • Government can work with UAA to strengthen the domestic agribusiness industry, to respond to investment opportunities in promoting and sustaining the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) momentum, as well as to focus attention and resources on specific value chains that are not only integral to the Strategic plans of the private sector partners, but also of strategic priorities for national development.

  • UAA also provides a platform for public-private partnerships which aim to address development issues in conjunction with the private sector, by attaining efficiency gains, mobilising resources and investments, developing innovative solutions and reducing risk.

  • With support from its partners, UAA provides access to technical expertise and targeted gap-filling system support to Government Policy makers and decision makers. This helps to enhance Government ownership, expand participation, and strengthen coordination of policy and regulatory reform processes, rendering these processes more efficient and effective in the short term, while being more resilient and sustainable in the longer term. Furthermore, the conducive agribusiness environment could unlock Uganda’s agricultural potential, leading to higher food security, increased food availability, savings on foreign exchange, earnings from agricultural exports and increased tax income. Consequently, the government can allocate its scarce resources to other investments