“The objective of this study is to put together information on lessons that policy makers and development partners alike could learn from the dairy sector in promoting growth of other agricultural value chains. Uganda has made some visible achievements in terms of economic performance in the last two decades. The country has attained impressive GDP growth rates averaging about 7 percent per annum since the 1990s. Despite the impressive overall economic performance a critical look at the sectoral composition of GDP shows that growth has not been robust in some sectors (see Table 1). Overall growth in agriculture has been slow compared to that of industry and services, and these fast growing sectors are weakly linked to the agricultural sector. Yet, the agricultural sector remains the main source of employment to nearly 66 percent of Uganda’s labour force; and a key sector in Uganda’s poverty reduction drive. The poor performance of agriculture led many critics to argue that the sector has responded negatively to the reforms. But within the agricultural sector, Table 1 reveals that the livestock sub sector has
maintained positive growth rates, averaging 3 percent per annum, and this performance is partly driven by the dairy sector. Dairy contributes about half of the total livestock GDP, which in turn contributes nearly 20 percent of the total agricultural GDP.”
