FtF Project Scaling out banana production in Northern Uganda

The Feed the Future (FtF) project has this year promoted the use and commercialization of banana in the Northern region of Uganda. Various stakeholder consultations meetings held in the region revealed a huge banana market in the region, Southern Sudan and Sudan.

Stakeholder consultations on scaling of banana in northern Uganda revealed a potentially huge banana market in the region.

Banana is intended to change the communities of Northern Uganda from depending on volatile, unstable annual cropping systems to more stable and reliable perennial cropping systems thereby improving and stabilizing their food and income security.

Preliminary findings of a detailed market study carried out showed that bananas were more profitable compared to key staples such as sim-sim, soya-beans, beans, groundnuts etc, with profitability margins of Ush6.2million/acre/year compared to rice’s Ush2.6million, groundnuts’ Ush2.0million or soybean’s Ush1.4million.

Other findings revealed that bananas consumed in Acholi and Lango sub-regions alone were worth Ush25.99billion and that most of them are sourced from other areas justifying the need to increase production in the region from 27.5 to 80 bunches/acre/month.

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