The National Information Technology Authority – Uganda (NITA-U) and the agriculture ministry have established an e-service system aimed at supporting the entire agricultural value chain.
Through the Regional Communications Infrastructure Programme (RCIP), funded by the World Bank, the Agro Input Traceability System’s (AITS) main objective is to monitor agro inputs at different points along the value chain.
Paul Senyange, the RCIP project manager of e-services at NITA-U, said the service would also monitor the imports and exports of plants and plant products in the agricultural sector. The sector is one of the four priority sectors under RCIP.
“The scope of the Agro Input Traceability System will be a full unitary system where different modules are seen as one system and hosted in its totality within the Government cloud as an on-premise solution.
“The AITS e-service has the following key modules: agro chemicals module, seed module, phytosanitary module and mobile app,” he said.
Senyange added that the AITS e-service project was aimed at addressing challenges such as no traceability of agro inputs (seeds and chemicals) and agricultural commodities that are traded within the country, lack of a centralised electronic database of agro input traders, their qualifications, and respective products dealt in.
It also looks at farmers not being able to validate the authenticity of the products they purchase and need for defined mechanism for providing feedback from the farmers to the agriculture ministry.
“This e-service is going to provide an efficient traceability of agrochemicals by the agro input inspectors from point of entry (importation/ manufacture) through the distribution chain to the final user (farmer).
“It will also track volumes of agro chemicals that are both imported and or manufactured in the country and provide market intelligence information in the agro chemicals sub-sector,” he said. Senyange added:
“The system will also track stock of agro chemicals, traceability of the outputs, for example, products due for export. It will also identify farmers growing specific agro inputs and from specific regions, provide efficient traceability of agro inputs from point of entry, and provide efficient traceability of the whole value chain including chemicals, seed and output,” Senyange said.
