Uganda

Summary

AgResults’ Uganda Legume Seed Challenge Project was designed as a six-year project using Pay-for-Results prizes to incentivize seed companies to produce and sell quality verified bean and soybean seed varieties to smallholder farmers. The project was terminated early due to enabling environment challenges, lack of competitor participation, and the inability to verify the quality of seeds sold under the project. Lutheran World Relief served as the Project Manager.

The Challenge Project aimed to drive up the production of high-quality legume seed.

The learning journey

Learning & Evaluation

The problem

Seed Companies Ignore Legume Seed

Legumes are highly nutritious crops; they also improve soil health through nitrogen fixation. However, due to a variety of contextual factors including uncertain demand, barriers to working capital, and opportunity costs, seed companies in Uganda do not focus on the legume seed market.

Contest design

Theory of Change

AgResults aimed that the prize incentive would spur Ugandan seed companies to increase investment in the production and marketing of improved legume seed. As they became more familiar with the benefits of improved legume seed, Ugandan smallholder farmers, particularly women who traditionally grow legumes, would increase their adoption. Increased use of high quality seed would lead to better yields, more income, and improved household food security and nutrition.

Prize Structure

The prize in Uganda included two parts: 1) access to cold storage to mitigate against overproduction of seed, and 2) an annualized prize based on seed sales above a baseline.

Expected impact

Quality legume seeds lead to higher yields and offer smallholder farmers several potential benefits over local seed. First, legumes are a relatively inexpensive, high-protein food, so higher yields could mean higher consumption among farming households of this nutritious food category. Second, farmers can sell surplus legumes at market, providing another source of revenue to increase their incomes. This is especially true of soybeans, which are often grown as a cash crop.

Planned Impact:

A stronger, more competitive local seed industry
Cumulative sales of 6,628 MT of legume seed
Up to a 60% increase in legume yields
Participating seed companies and farmers may reach cumulative benefits of US $2.5M and US $30.4M, respectively.

Actual results

The project closed early. However, the closure has led to a wealth of learning on what works and what does not.

# of Competitors

$207100

Competitor Investment

2762MT

Amount of Seed Sold

Learning & evaluation

What We've Learned through Implementation

This table illustrates how our learning has evolved in Uganda from project design through implementation. Further details can be found in the Learning Library.

Evaluation Design

The nation-wide reach of the Uganda project prevented a control group from being set aside, so the Evaluator planned to use a non-experimental performance evaluation (rather than an experimental or quasi-experimental impact evaluation) design to assess changes in key outcomes at the smallholder farmer level. The Evaluation approach involved conducting extensive qualitative research to better understand the mechanisms behind observed changes. To assess the project’s impact on the market for quality legume seed, the Evaluator employed primarily qualitative research guided by the structure conduct and performance analytical framework.

Evaluation Stage

The Evaluator completed baseline data collection in 2017. The baseline report is available here. When the project was cancelled in 2018, the endline evaluation was accordingly canceled, given the project’s limited impact on influencing the market or the legume seed value chain.

Uganda Legume Seeds Challenge Project

Summary

The learning journey