District Development Support Programme

District Development Support Programme

This six-year IFAD-initiated programme, which is being supervised directly by IFAD, is a follow-up to the ongoing Hoima District Integrated Community Development Project financed by a grant from the Belgian Survival Fund Joint Programme. The programme has been extended to cover the Kabarole District and aims primarily to address the socio-economic problems of an extremely poor population in a post-conflict situation. More specifically, the emphasis of the programme is to:

• raise household and rural incomes through support to traditional cash crops (coffee and bananas) and other income-generating activities
• improve the overall health status of the population through the provision of clean water, sanitation facilities and primary health care
• improve food security through an assessment of household nutritional needs and suitable crop production support
• improve revenue collection and local governance to enhance the long-term sustainability of public services

The participants are poor smallholders, and special attention is paid to women and children. The programme reaches out to 255,000 households (about 1.1 million people) the three districts. About 80 per cent of the 1,103 villages in Hoima and Kibaale will benefit from better primary health care, about 70,000 people are expected to benefit from the water supply and sanitation components, and an estimated 30,000 people, notably women, will benefit from the programme's support to rural finance. Local NGOs are playing a central role in all of the activities.

Participating districts have made impressive gains in agricultural production since the project began. For example, in Hoima, honey production rose from 750 kg in 2003 to an estimated 4.5 tonnes by April 2004, and rice production rose from 412 tonnes in 2002 to 2,000 tonnes by early 2004. Similarly, by 2004 rice farmers in Kabaale and Kamwenge districts had increased their profits from US$300 to US$600 per ha. In addition, several new health units slated for construction were completed by May 2004. The units are benefiting more than 100,000 people, many of whom had no previous access to health services.

Source: IFAD