Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) was established under the Uganda Communications Act 2013 with the objective of developing a modern communications sector and is mandated by the Act to promote use of new communication technologies in the transformation of the county into a knowledge based economy. Furthermore, UCC administers the Rural Communications Development Fund (RCDF) a Universal Service Fund (USF) to communications in Uganda. Under RCDF UCC supports a number of initiatives in health, education, agriculture, private sector among others with the aim of promoting uptake of ICTs in the country.
We noted that in the execution of her mandate, Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) through the Rural Communications Development Fund (RCDF) launched a call for business plan proposals to establish a collaboration on the implementation of key activities under a general thematic area of enhancing ICT adoption in agricultural among small holder farmers. According to a study which was conducted by the UCC in 2019 on the state of ICT4Agric Innovation in Uganda.
The study revealed that, indeed agriculture employs over 70% of Uganda’s population, of which majority are youth and women. These observations are in line with various studies and policy instrument of government including the MAAIF strategic plan, the Agriculture
extension policy 2016 among others. The report noted that over 70% of the farmers are smallholder farmers based in rural areas, whose operations are greatly affected by; climate change, weak digital skills, limited access to productivity knowledge along value chains,
limited access to quality farm inputs, weak logistics systems, limited access to quality extension services, weak business intelligence, limited access o quality markets among others. The emerging 4th industrial revolution powered by artificial intelligence, 5G and data science does provide possibilities of addressing some of these challenges as illustrated in the figure below;
