By the Witness Radio team.

Uganda has begun public consultations on the proposed East African Community Seeds and Plant Varieties Bill, 2025, bringing together farmers, researchers, regulators, policymakers, and other stakeholders to explore how this regional law could reshape access to seed, farmers’ rights, and seed systems throughout East Africa.

The consultations are part of wider public hearings across EAC Partner States before the Bill is considered by the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA).

The proposed legislation seeks to harmonize seed regulation across the region by establishing common procedures for plant variety evaluation and release, seed certification and plant variety protection.

Its proponents say harmonizing the rules would make it easier for quality seed to move across borders, reduce duplication of regulatory requirements, and encourage investment in the regional seed sector.

Yet these consultations have sparked questions about whether the regional framework can truly safeguard indigenous seed systems, farmers’ rights, biodiversity, and food sovereignty while welcoming commercial seed companies.

East African Legislative Assembly Member of Parliament Rose Akol chaired the first hearing in Uganda. She and her team examined provisions of the Bill that participants said required clarification or modification, including issues around seed certification and the movement of seed between Partner States.

Akol said the Bill aims to ease access to seed across the region by reducing barriers from differing national requirements.

“The preamble of the Bill is meant to ease access to plant and seed varieties by farmers in the community, so as not to make it difficult for them to access seeds because of non-tariff barriers where countries have their own standards and requirements in terms of registration, certification and laboratory testing,” Akol said.

One concern was how a harmonized certification system would operate across countries with different laws, standards, registration requirements, laboratory-testing procedures, and regulatory systems.

She said harmonizing standards across Partner States would make it easier for farmers to obtain seed from other countries within the region.

“Once the member states have a harmonized law applying the same standards, it will be easier for farmers to access seeds from across borders,” she added.

The East African Community Seeds and Plant Varieties Bill, 2025, is designed to create a common regional framework for seed regulation, plant variety evaluation and release, seed certification and plant variety protection.

The Bill also seeks to promote investment and innovation in the seed sector while supporting food security and sustainable agricultural development.

Moses Edward Erongu, a Senior Agriculture Inspector at the National Seed Certification Service in the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries, said the consultations were important because they allowed stakeholders to examine and validate the provisions of the proposed law.

He said harmonization could make it easier for farmers to obtain seed from other EAC countries and create opportunities for seed companies to invest in production within the region.

“If we harmonize this law, it will be easier for investors to establish anywhere because they will no longer fear the different regulatory regimes. They can look at comparative advantages—for Uganda, for example, where we have two seasons—and seed companies would be interested in investing here, producing seed in Uganda and supplying other parts of the region. That creates employment for our people and income for farmers who will be engaged as out-growers.”

Still, worries linger that greater commercialization and regional harmonization might threaten the livelihoods of farmers relying on locally produced, farmer-managed seed.

When Witness Radio asked whether the proposed Bill could leave smallholder farmers dependent on commercial seed companies, Erongu rejected the suggestion that the legislation could result in “seed slavery.”

“There is nothing like seed slavery. This encourages farmers to access seeds because smallholder farmers are the ones who utilize the seed,” he added. Making seed more accessible would allow smallholder farmers to benefit from improved agricultural technologies and potentially increase their productivity and returns.

“If you don’t make procedures easier for them to get seed, they are kept out of the technology. As technology grows, they remain excluded and continue using inferior seed material, which means they cannot get a gainful return from their farming efforts,” Erongu added.

Traders at the consultations voiced support for harmonized regional rules, arguing that lifting non-tariff barriers could ease the transport of seed and other agricultural inputs across EAC borders.

Meanwhile, civil society organizations and farmer-rights advocates are set to share their perspectives on the proposed legislation in full later today, 27 August 2026.

Their stance will carry significant weight, as the Bill addresses crucial issues such as farmers’ rights to save, exchange, and access seed; the safeguarding of indigenous seed systems; biodiversity; and the influence of commercial seed companies.

Public hearings continue today, with stakeholders poised to offer more insights before the proposed regional law moves forward to its next stage.

Twenty years after AGRA’s launch, a report built on 18 years of FAO data paints a contrasting picture: fertiliser use and crop area surged, overall yields disappointed and undernourishment rose in the focus countries.

On 24 August 2026, a report presented in Dakar for the twentieth anniversary of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) scrutinised nearly two decades of public and philanthropic support for a model built on fertilisers, commercial seeds and subsidies, just as the African Union fine‑tunes its 2026‑2035 agricultural strategy. Drawing on 18 years of FAO data for 13 countries targeted by AGRA, the document concludes that input use and cultivated area have risen sharply, while productivity gains have been more modest than expected and undernourishment has increased significantly.

According to the analysis, fertiliser use in the focus countries more than doubled between 2006 and 2024, while cultivated area grew by 46 %; yet average annual yield growth for the main crops reached only 1.2 %, compared with 1.3 % in the twelve years preceding AGRA’s creation. This finding echoes work published a few days earlier by the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) and a Tufts University researcher, who argue that the original promise to double smallholders’ yields and incomes while halving hunger has not been met in the participating countries.

Maize‑centred gains at the expense of crop diversity

The authors point out that maize, the flagship crop of this approach, shows contrasted performance: yields are reported to have increased by 40 %, but on the back of a 71 % expansion in maize area, while yields for millet fell by 17 %, for roots and tubers by 10 % and for groundnuts by 11 %. This reallocation has reduced the share of millet and sorghum in cultivated land from about 26 % to 16 %, even though these cereals remain central to diets and climate resilience across large Sahelian and Sudanian zones.

Farmer networks and agroecology experts stress that this shift of land and public support towards hybrid maize and nitrogen fertiliser has increased farms’ dependence on imported inputs and weakened food systems built on traditional cereals, legumes and root crops.

Rising undernourishment in the focus countries

The report links these technical choices to food security trends: in the studied countries, the number of chronically undernourished people is estimated to have risen from 94.6 million in 2004‑2006 to 149.6 million in 2022‑2024, a 58 % increase, with Nigeria accounting for a large share of the deterioration. This trajectory matches the estimates used by AFSA and its partners, who recall that AGRA originally set a goal of halving undernourishment in its focus countries, a target later revised under the AGRA 3.0 strategy.

The authors underline, however, that national situations diverge: Ethiopia and Ghana have reduced the number of undernourished people, while Nigeria accounts for more than half of the increase and countries such as Malawi have seen hunger rise despite higher cereal yields.

Senegal as a comparator outside the AGRA focus group

Beyond the AGRA countries, Senegal is used as a comparator; the report notes stronger performance on some yield indicators without claiming causality, and highlights the role of greater crop diversity and locally anchored agroecological initiatives. Senegalese agroecology specialists recall that the country combines targeted input schemes with support for value chains such as millet, cowpea and irrigated horticulture, partly limiting the monoculture effects observed in some AGRA focus states while leaving open questions around soil fertility and exposure to external markets.

The 2026‑2035 agricultural strategy shaped by AGRA’s scorecard

As the African Union finalises its 2026‑2035 continental agricultural strategy under the CAADP/Malabo framework, AGRA’s evaluations are feeding a broader debate on how to combine public investment, development‑finance institutions and family farming in transforming food systems. A report released in March 2026 by AFSA on African Development Bank‑backed farm projects already pointed to a persistent bias towards input‑intensive models, at the expense of diversification, soil fertility and farmer‑managed seed systems.

The Dakar report explicitly recommends that African agricultural policies give more weight to crop diversification, agroecology, farmer‑managed seed systems, soil fertility, public research and extension services, instead of treating commercial inputs as the sole engine of transformation.

Upcoming AFSA report on twenty years of the Green Revolution

These findings will feed into the discussion around AFSA’s report The Green Revolution Has Failed Africa: Twenty Years of Evidence and What Works Instead, to be launched on 24 August 2026 at a continental webinar on lessons from the AGRA experience and farmer‑led alternatives. AGRA, for its part, is marking its twentieth anniversary by highlighting a shift in its mandate towards food systems and policy support, emphasising closer partnerships with governments, research centres and the private sector to strengthen the foundations of agricultural productivity.

For now, the quantified scorecard presented in Dakar and the parallel release of AFSA’s review send a clear signal that the coming decade of African agriculture will have to arbitrate more explicitly between subsidies for inputs, crop diversification and the scale‑up of agroecological models before the 2026‑2035 strategy is formally adopted.

Source: capmad.com

By the Witness Radio team.

Envisioned as a cornerstone of Uganda’s energy future, the Karuma Hydropower Project aimed to boost the nation’s power supply, lower electricity costs, and secure lasting energy stability.

In 2013, work began on the 600-megawatt Karuma Hydropower Station, nestled along the River Nile in Kiryandongo District. Led by China’s Sinohydro Corporation, the project transformed over 465 hectares with an underground power station and sprawling infrastructure.

China largely financed the project, with the Ugandan government contributing alongside the Export-Import Bank of China.

Karuma was heralded as a game-changer for Uganda’s electricity landscape, set to light up more homes and fuel the nation’s ambitions for industrial and economic growth.

Yet as the power station finally became reality in 2024, many who gave up their land and homes say they are still waiting for the government’s decade-old promises of compensation and resettlement.

Over 400 households remain caught in the heart of an unresolved compensation battle, urging the government to honor its responsibility and ensure those who lost everything are finally compensated or resettled.

According to the Parliamentary Committee on Environment and Natural Resources’ report on the Ministerial Policy Statements for the financial year 2026/27, the government owes approximately UGX 70 billion to Project Affected Persons (PAPs) under the Karuma Hydropower Project.

For many victims, these delays have meant years without the land and livelihoods that once sustained them.

“I am growing old and don’t have a permanent job. It is becoming hard to survive after losing my land that was my family’s source of livelihood,” Owelo told the Witness Radio team.

Owelo Patrick, now 53, is still waiting for compensation. When the project claimed his eucalyptus plantation in Ayuda Village, he lost not just land, but the lifeline that once supported his family.

Thirteen years on, he finds himself renting a modest house and scraping by on odd jobs to survive.

“At this age, I work for anyone who calls me because I want to survive with my family,” Owelo adds.

He says the wait has grown more painful as some fellow claimants have died before seeing justice.

“The government should keep its promise because most of our colleagues promised compensation are dying, and for those of us alive, our patience has run out,” he says.

Apaco Suprianto Adyeeri is another whose life the project upended.

Now renting a small house along Obote Road in Karuma Town, Apaco recalls losing two acres of fertile land where she once grew cassava and other crops.

“Life is difficult because I have no money and struggle to care for my grandchildren. I don’t have a permanent house and survive on a small bar business that raises minimal income, which cannot support my family,” she says.

To make ends meet, Apaco now hires small plots of land to grow cassava, maize, and beans, hoping to earn just enough to get by.

“If the government can’t compensate us, let them give us land elsewhere to live. We expected help to rebuild our livelihood after losing our land. But 13 years later, we continue to suffer,” she reveals.

The $1.7 billion Karuma project swept through Kiryandongo District, displacing residents from villages like Nora, Akuridia, Karuma, Bedmot, and Awo.

Residents recResidents say they were forced to leave their homes and fields before any compensation arrived, destroying their farms, businesses, and means of living. Affected residents interviewed by Witness Radio said that after the eviction, the government also promised to resettle some of the affected families in Nwoya District, with each family expected to receive two acres of land and a constructed house.

Yet residents say the promised resettlement remains little more than words and has never fully materialized.

For farming families, losing land meant scrambling to rent plots elsewhere to grow food or earn a living. Others have been pushed into rented homes and still struggle to survive.

The long wait has come at a steep human cost, with some affected residents dying before receiving the compensation promised.

Seeking justice, affected families have sent repeated petitions to the President and government bodies, pleading for action on their long-overdue compensation and resettlement.

Some of their concerns are also documented in a written complaint dated 14 August 2024, signed by William Ogik and other Project Affected Persons from Karuma.

The letter, addressed to relevant authorities and copied to the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development, Kiryandongo District leadership, the Chief Government Valuer, the Speaker of Parliament, Sinohydro and the Chinese Embassy in Uganda, formally outlines the communities’ grievances and calls for government intervention.

The communities voiced grievances over delayed compensation, claims of undervalued property, and the devastating loss of their farmland.

Ochaya Washington, former District Councilor and chief petitioner for the vulnerable, warns that the situation is now dire for elderly and at-risk residents who have waited years for the government to keep its word.

“People are all dying. I call upon the government and the Ministry to intervene and help these people before they perish,” he says.

Uganda’s drive for progress comes with a lesson from Karuma: true development must include timely compensation, real resettlement, and safeguarding livelihoods. Thirteen years later, many families are still waiting to piece their lives back together.