It is quite a challenge to develop a major domestic industry that brings public and private investors together and also nurtures the interests of small-scale producers. An IFAD-funded project in Uganda is rising to that challenge by helping to forge a highly innovative partnership between small-scale producers of palm oil and a private sector operator. With the project’s support Uganda has progressed in a decade from almost total dependence on vegetable oil imports to development of a thriving domestic production sector that has a promising potential for foreign trade. And the country has seen a significant improvement in people’s nutrition as well.
A decade of political and civil strife in Uganda left the economy in shambles and the rural population even deeper in poverty. Rural family health, water supply and sanitation in the late 1980s became alarming; the status of health services was for the most part inoperational, and the road network was in ruins. Of special concern were the districts of Hoima and Kibaale.
The Ugandan Women's Effort to Save Orphans (UWESO) is an NGO created in 1986, with the aim of assisting approximately 1.03 million people under the age of 17 who became orphans during the mid-1970s civil war. Since then, many more children have become orphans mainly losing parents to AIDS. Approved by IFAD/BSF in 1994, the UWESO Development Project (UDP) was designed to help the NGO assist these young people and their foster parents/guardians