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The Kigezi BDS - Business Development Services Initiative was designed to promote Business Development Services (BDS) models that appeal to and reach poor and marginalised people. The project, which started in April 2005 and ended in June 2008 was funded by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA), CARE Austria and CARE Uganda to a tune of Euros 614,060. The overall objective of the project was to achieve sustainable livelihoods and social inclusion for 25,000 capital and land poor households in the three districts of Kigezi region (Kabale, Kisoro, Kanungu) located in South West Uganda.
The project targets were subsistence smallholder producers, households involved in small enterprises, people living around protected areas, ethnic minorities, landless youth and women.
The project design was based on the Market Development approach (MDA) which aims at increasing household incomes through improving access to BDS services by creating a vibrant private-sector-serviced BDS market.
CARE Uganda implemented this project in collaboration with locally based organisations focussing on different sub sectors with the agricultural sector.
Within each of the subsectors, KBDS identified and designed suitable BDS products as follows: - passion fruits: Kawanda Hybrid, spray pumps, advisory services, collection centres
- Honey: Tree seedlings, Harvesting gears, Honey harvesting, Honey BDS association, collection centres, leasing, traditional hives scheme
- Handicrafts: transport, advisory/ group monitoring services, raw materials, collection centres.
Here, service providers for each of the key BDS were identified and their skills were upgraded by training and exposure visits. The project also assisted in costing of the services, an activity which was done in a participatory manner together with the consumers. This was followed by promotion of the various BDS among a total 409 producer groups comprising of 14,229 members and in total, 57% of the total target of 25,000 households were reached.
The 14,229 producers were further supported to form strong producer and marketing associations through training their associations in quality control, record keeping and market research and analysis. The major function of the producer and marketing associations is to ensure quality produce is bulked and sold at the best markets available. The associations were also facilitated to develop collection centres where they bulk, supervise quality issues and conduct market research.
In addition all the 4 implementing partners were not only supported in organisational development but also helped to get better coverage in terms of bigger membership and subcounties of operation. Similarly, the producers were linked to better produce markets through their partners. Examples of such markets include: the National Association for Womens Organisations in Uganda (NAWOU) for handicrafts, Shoprite Uganda for Honey, and Britannia Allied Industries for passion fruits. This in addition to other smaller market linkages, mainly local markets were also established through KBDS project.
The project was able to successfully lobby the Uganda Wildlife Authority to formalise placement of hives in Mgahinga National Park by Landless Batwa as well as create other strategic partnerships with key institutions such as District Local Governments, the National Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO), The National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS) Uganda Commodity Exchange, Uganda Micro Finance Limited for micro leasing of the langstoth bee hives.
These networks are key for sustainability of the project work. The project participants also received training in cross cutting issues such as natural resources management, gender and HIV/ AIDS. The impact of these interventions is clearly visible at partner levels and household levels for example 67% of the 14,229 households have been able to realise improvement in their household economic security through increased production and sales. As a result they have been able to send their children to school, expand their enterprises and cater for other basic livelihood needs etc.
01.04.2005 - 30.06.2008
Austrian Development Agency (ADA)
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