Stakeholder workshop brief: Social and behaviour change intervention for scaling equitable access to rice and common beans quality seed in Butaleja District Eastern Uganda

Agriculture serves as a cornerstone of Uganda's economy, employing 70% of the labour force and covering half of the national land area. However, smallholder farmers, comprising 90% of the farming community, face barriers hindering agricultural productivity and food security, including limited access to quality seeds, limited market access, and lack of access to agricultural information. To address these barriers, Work Package 6 under the Seed Equal initiatives of the CGIAR collaborated with the Center for Behaviour Change Communication (CBCC), to develop Social and Behaviour Change (SBC) interventions for scaling access to improved seeds by women and other marginalized social groups. The SBC strategy was codesigned and developed in a stakeholder workshop held at Mbale, Uganda, from 20th – 21st March 2024. The participants include actors within the rice and bean value chains, comprising breeders, farmers, aggregators, off-takers, development partners, seed entrepreneurs, and agro-dealers. The workshop aimed at providing feedback on the baseline assessment study to the workshop stakeholders and co-create the social and behaviour change strategies for equitable access to quality improved beans and rice seeds in Butaleja district, Uganda.
Organized through the collaboration between IRRI, the National Agriculture Research Organization (NARO), and CBCC as the implementing partner, the workshop highlighted the need for seed entrepreneurship to scale up production and adoption of high-quality seed varieties among smallholder farmers in Naweyo and Mazimasa Sub-counties in Butaleja District4. IRRI’s overarching mission is to alleviate poverty and hunger in rice-dependent populations while promoting environmental sustainability and empowering women and youth in the rice industry. The threefold approach to achieve these goals includes- innovation, catalysation, and transformation, which is in line with the framework of Seed Equal WP 6 with a focus on ensuring equitable access to quality seeds. Hence, the importance of behavioural change in driving a lasting impact.
The local leadership (Butaleja District chairperson) acknowledged the workshop's significance in enhancing agricultural development. The importance of change in community to embrace the initiative for lasting impact and the role of social behaviour change in realizing the initiative's success was emphasized. There was an appreciation for the project's initiative and a pledge by local leadership to facilitate an enabling environment for partners to succeed in project implementation.