The pink revolution Uganda SUMMARY 
This project (1 April 2017 – 31 March 2020), implemented by Plan International Uganda and VEDCO, enhances young women farmers’ agency and decision-making power. It also increases their income from soy production and improves household budgeting, ultimately enhancing household resilience. The project targets the soy sector since its potential is grossly underexploited in Northern Uganda. The innovation of ‘gender transformative contract farming’ lies in the incentives it creates for farmer groups to pursue gender equality within all their operations. This includes the application of bylaws on gender equality, as well as providing women with equal access to improved farming inputs, and capacity building on financial, entrepreneurial and marketing skills. At the end of the project, 2,500 smallholder farmers (80% young women) will be socially and economically empowered, and their livelihoods and food security will be improved. The problem that we intend to address is twofold: first, women farmers in Northern Uganda have very little decision making power with regard to the agricultural production process and the income they generate. Second, due to inefficient production (leading to low yields and household incomes) and a lack of balanced household expenditure decisions, the capacity of households to secure household stability and resilience is limited. Poverty is unequally distributed across Uganda, with the highest poverty rates (43.8%) in Northern Uganda a result of youth unemployment, gender inequality, lack of access to basic services and low economic development. About 80% of the population living below poverty line is found in rural areas, where subsistence agriculture is the main source of food and livelihood security. In the target districts, over 60% of young women who work as smallholder farmers do not generate sufficient income to sustain their livelihoods and provide nutritious food for themselves and their children. While women are the primary caregivers and primary producers in agriculture, many of them are unable to realize sustainable livelihoods from farming. Gender inequality within household, community and society inhibits women farmers’ access to agriculture inputs, markets and knowledge, limiting their capacity to increase productivity and generate income. Cultural norms make it difficult for young women to access and own land. Traditionally, land belongs to the father who divides it amongst the males in the family. Young women are not culturally entitled to inherit land and often access it through their husband though this does not imply ownership. In addition, mothers sometimes lobby their husbands to give their daughters an inheritance, but any land that is provided is usually reclaimed when the daughter is married. This in combination with the early marriage tradition in Uganda, puts young women in a vulnerable position. The envisaged primary outcomes are: 1) 2,500 smallholder farmers (80% women) have improved their incomes from soy production and 2) the voice and agency of 2,000 young women farmers in Northern Uganda is increased. This ultimately contributes to the envisaged long term goal: young women farmers in Northern Uganda are empowered to increase resilience of their households. Empowerment to increase resilience is therefore enhanced via two pathways, namely 1) increasing income of 2,500 smallholder farmers (80% women) by improving their production and productivity of high quality soy grains and ensuring a guaranteed sale of their produce by directly linking the farmers to the buyer, and 2) increasing the voice and agency of 2,000 female smallholder farmers, by enhancing their decision making power on the use of the increased income from soy, by strengthening women’s position through implementation of gender transformative contract farming agreements, and by supporting farmer organizations and cooperatives to develop and enforce gender equality through gender transformative bylaws and policies. By targeting women’s decision making influence, linkages and entitlements, the proposed interventions aim to provide safety nets for young women farmers, in terms of assets and opportunities (in the areas of nutrition, health and education) and social networks, enabling them to improve their households’ current livelihood conditions and build resilience for future shocks. The project is based on the belief that addressing gender inequality at the individual, household and society levels is not only just, but also the smartest investment for achieving structural poverty reduction and inclusive development. Over the past decades, efforts to increase Africa’s agricultural production have raised incomes, but have done little to strengthen food security and household resilience – because it is primarily women who grow the food for household consumption and yet have little voice to make decisions about the income. Enhancing women’s decision making power over income generation is therefore crucial to ensure a bigger impact on household resilience. This project aims to contribute to closing the gender gap in smallholder farming in Northern Uganda, by enhancing women farmer’s empowerment in all its dimensions.
Soybean is an emerging crop in the Northern region in which young women farmers are actively engaged. It has huge potential for commercial production, with high in-country and external demand due to growing regional markets and livestock industry. Improved, high yielding, pest resistant soybean varieties have been released. However this high potential is grossly underexploited, particularly among smallholder women farmers, who only realise about 30% of the potential yields (up to 800Kg/Acre). 2,500 smallholder farmers (80% women) in Lira, Apac, Alebtong, Dokolo and Oyam districts in Northern Uganda. This first intermediate outcome: increased production and productivity of high quality soy grain by smallholder farmers (80% women), is realized by building the capacity of (women) farmers on good agricultural practices through training, equipping them with the needed business skills (such as financial literacy, negotiation and marketing skills), facilitating their access to agricultural inputs and finance, and strengthening of extension services. Lead farmers (80% women) serving as local resource persons will be trained (through a Training of Trainers (ToT) model) on Agronomy, Farming as a business, Post-Harvest handling and Safe use of chemicals, and facilitated to pass on this knowledge to their fellow farmers. In addition, demonstrations will be established at lead farmers’ fields to support the trainings on agronomic practices in a cost effective way. Key to the improvement of production capacity in Uganda’s oilseed sectors, is the access to good quality agricultural inputs: drought and pest resistant and high yielding soybean seed and fertilizer. Access to credit will be facilitated through various ways: 1) by further strengthening Village Saving and Loans Associations (VSLAs) which are already widely operational in Uganda, to enable smallholder farmers that lack access to formal services to access to capital for agro-business start-up and growth; 2) by linking mature VSLAs (assessed in terms of group leadership, organizational capacity, accumulated savings, loan repayments and management capacity) to Financial Institutions (FIs), and 3) through the contract farming agreement with a private company. 
One of the key interventions in the project is to support companies and farmer organizations to implement gender transformative contract farming agreements. These farming contracts work in two ways: on the one side, they will ensure a guaranteed income to the farmers for their soy grain and guarantee the company that they will receive confirmed high quality produce from the farmer. On the other side, they will increase women’s decision making power by integrating gender transformative clauses, such as affirmative action clauses regarding the representation of women on the executive committees and marketing committees, and budget development with provision of gender responsive/sensitive activities at sub county and district level. By including affirmative clauses in the contract farming agreements, this project will increase women’s access to inputs in the value chain and women’s decision making power related to the income that they generate (as gender transformative contracting is a core element of this proposal’s innovation, this aspect is further elaborated under “innovation” below).
An underlying intermediate outcome of having farmers, their organisations and communities support equal decision making by women will be achieved through the sensitization of young women farmers and their households and communities on gender equality issues, and by enhanced presentation, negotiation and communication skills of young women farmers. In addition, both men and women will be educated on household budgeting and the use of income generated through soy production. It is envisaged that women and men will make informed decisions about expenditures for their household to make them more resilient in the short and long term, particularly with regard to expenditures for food and nutrition security, health and education. Commercial incentives and private sector participation are key to sustainability, and the central pillar of the project’s exit strategy. Smallholder contract farming schemes around the world have a good record of sustainability, as it is in the interest of private businesses to ensure that smallholder production is sustained in order to achieve full utilization of milling and processing  capacity. Working directly with the private sector will enable the farmers to learn what they need to do to produce for the market and sustain commercial relations with private business. Consolidating these business relationships will contribute to phasing out the need for further donor support. As the unmet potential of soy in Uganda is still high, the scalability of improvements to agronomic practices and inputs usage is considerable, as success will drive further farmer interest in the region. 
With regard to scalability to other crops: at this stage the project will focus only on soybean raw production, although trainings will deal with other crops in a secondary way as part of good agricultural practices (such as intercropping or rotating with maize). However, many of the modalities used in this project for the soy value chain are not soy specific and suitable for replication to other crops and regions, once adjusted to the (local) context. Specifically, the use of gender-transformative contracts and bylaws can be scaled up by popularizing the ‘gender transformative checklist’ as a tool, as well as sets of standard requirements tested and proven in the functioning contracts and bylaws. 
Training community and private sector extension services on key aspects of the project approach (gender transformative contracts combined with trainings on ‘farming as a business’) will sustainably strengthen these resources that benefit the whole community, and enable them to integrate these practices into their daily work, leading to higher production and productivity.