Listening to the Silent Patient Uganda’S Journey Towards Institutionalizing Inclusive Plant Health Services Cabi Working Paper 7
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LISTENING TO THE SILENT PATIENT UGANDA’S JOURNEY TOWARDS INSTITUTIONALIZING INCLUSIVE PLANT HEALTH SERVICES CABI WORKING PAPER 7 Edited by Remco Mur, Frances Williams, Solveig Danielsen, Geneviève Audet-Bélanger and Joseph Mulema LISTENING TO THE SILENT PATIENT UGANDA’S JOURNEY TOWARDS INSTITUTIONALIZING INCLUSIVE PLANT HEALTH SERVICES CABI WORKING PAPER 7 June 2015 Editors Remco Mur Frances Williams Solveig Danielsen Geneviève Audet-Bélanger Joseph Mulema please visit www.plantwise.org for more information CABI Canary Bird 673 Limuru Road, Muthaiga PO Box 633-00621 Nairobi, Kenya T: +254 (0)20 2271000 / 20 E: [email protected] www.cabi.org KIT Sustainable Economic Development PO Box 95001, 1090 HA Amsterdam, the Netherlands www.kit.nl/sed Film production and editing: Julia Dennis (CABI) and Lauren Brown (CABI) Design and layout: Sarah Hilliar (CABI) and John Gittins Technical Editing: Rebecca J Murphy Publishing and distribution: CABI © 2015 CABI This study and the preparation of the working paper was financially supported by the Plantwise Programme. However, it does not necessarily represent the views of those organizations and is the sole work of its authors. The copyright holder of this work is CAB International (trading as CABI). It is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial Licence (CC BY-NC). For further details please refer to http://creativecommons.org/license/. This working paper was internally peer-reviewed. It may be cited as: Mur, R., Williams, F., Danielsen, S., Audet-Bélanger, G. and Mulema, J. (eds) (2015) Listening to the Silent Patient. Uganda’s Journey towards Institutionalizing Inclusive Plant Health Services. CABI Working Paper 7, 224 pp. ORCID numbers: Remco Mur 0000-0003-0518-3152; Frances Williams 0000-0002-6772-0753; Solveig Danielsen 0000- 0002-0464-8395; Geneviève Audet-Bélanger 0000-0003-3111-2622; Joseph Mulema 0000-0002-8738-1306. http://dx.doi.org/10.1079/CABIPLANT-37-55 Contents Contents 3 Acronyms 5 Summary 6 Foreword 10 Acknowledgements 12 Part I The evolution of plant clinics in Uganda 13 1. An introduction to the working paper 15 Plantwise: an attempt to strengthen plant health systems worldwide 19 Agriculture in Uganda 22 Agricultural advisory services in Uganda: a major challenge 24 Methodological process 26 Structure of the working paper 30 2. Looking at plant clinics: making sense of practice 35 About institutions and plant health systems 36 Gender 42 3. Plant clinics in Uganda 49 History at a glance 50 Where are we now? 56 Plant clinic operations 57 Plant doctors 59 Plant clinic users 62 The Plantwise Online Management System 68 Plant doctor conferences 69 It’s an emergency! Plant health rallies and other approaches for rapid delivery of plant health messages 70 4. Plant clinic adaptations 75 An overview of some of the plant clinic adaptations 77 How local adaptation improves service delivery 84 5. Gender responsiveness in plant clinic delivery 87 Attending the plant clinic. Or not? 88 Encouraging women’s involvement 96 Is the advice suitable? 99 What happens to the advice? 103 Gender-responsive delivery from implementing organizations 106 Reflections and implications for plant clinic service provision 107 6. Institutionalization 109 Policy support 111 Financing 113 Building a plant clinic workforce 116 Stakeholder engagement and networking 119 Local ownership and accountability 120 Basic procedures 122 Project identity 128 What is required to create a coherent plant health system? 129 3 4 Listening to the silent patient 7. Conclusions 135 Local adaptation 137 The need for a systems approach 138 A new focus: building adaptive capacity 140 Gender 142 Institutionalizing plant clinics: creating an enabling environment 143 Final remarks 145 Part II Case studies 149 A. Nakifuma clinic 151 Nakifuma plant clinic at a glance 152 Farming in Nakifuma 153 Back to the beginning: 2005 155 Clinic operations 156 B. Bwera plant clinic 163 Bwera plant clinic at a glance 164 Farming in Bwera 165 How it started and was sustained 166 How it works 168 C. Kayunga mobile clinic 177 Kayunga district mobile plant clinic at a glance 178 Farming systems 179 How were services provided prior to plant clinics? 181 How did it start? 181 Plant clinic operations 183 A plant clinic day: from mobilization to the end 185 Adaptations: what is special? 188 Sustaining the plant clinics 189 D. Kabarwa plant clinic 191 Kabarwa plant clinic at a glance 192 Farming system 193 The urge to provide quality services 194 This is how it works 196 E. Mairirwe plant clinic 201 Mairirwe plant clinic at a glance 202 Farming in Bugambe sub-county 203 From local initiative to routine operations 204 How does it work? 206 Annex 1. List of movies 213 Annex 2. Contributors 217 Contributors 217 Editing team 220 Annex 3. The organizations 222 Acronyms AASP Agricultural advisory service provider AFAAS African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services ATAAS Agricultural Technology and Agribusiness Advisory Services BIC Bwera Information Centre CAADP Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme CBF Community-based facilitator CBO Community-based organization CIF Community information facilitator CPF Community process facilitator CSO Civil society organization DSIP Development Strategy and Investment Plan FAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations FOWODE Forum for Women in Democracy, Uganda GDP Gross domestic product HORTEXA Horticultural Exporters Association of Uganda ICT Information and Communications Technology KIT Royal Tropical Institute, the Netherlands MAAIF Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries M&E Monitoring and Evaluation MUZARDI Mukono Zonal Agricultural Research and Development Institute NAADS National Agricultural Advisory Services NARO National Agricultural Research Organisation NGO Non-governmental organization OECD Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development POMS Plantwise Online Management System PKPi Pest Knowledge Partnership initiative QR code Quick response code RIC-NET Rwenzori Information Centres Network RWECO Rwenzori Consortium for Civil Competence SATNET Sustainable Agricultural Trainers Network SG2000 Sasakawa Global 2000 SMS Short message service SNV Netherlands Development Organisation SOCADIDO Soroti Catholic Diocese Integrated Development Organisation ToT Training of trainers UBOS Uganda Bureau of Statistics UNADA Uganda National Agro-Input Dealers Association UNFFE Uganda National Farmers Federation URL Uniform resource locator USD United States dollar (1 USD = 2500 Uganda shillings, UGX) 5 Summary Every year, farmers in sub-Saharan Africa suffer from unacceptable levels of crop loss as a result of plant health problems, threatening their food security, income and livelihoods. This working paper shares lessons from Plantwise, an initiative to improve smallholder farmers’ access to plant health services in Uganda so that they can improve their yields, increase their incomes and improve their food security and livelihoods. The working paper presents lessons from almost ten years of experiences in implementing plant clinics in Uganda. It includes case studies that describe, and put into perspective, the experiences of five plant clinics. Plantwise (which started in 2011) is aiming to make high quality, relevant information available to farmers, extension systems and governments, contributing to strengthening plant health systems by working with local extension services, non-governmental organizations and other key actors in plant health to provide smallholder farmers with access to advisory services from plant clinics. The idea behind plant clinics comes from human health clinics: people visit health clinics for preventive and curative care. Likewise, farmers could go to plant clinics with their crop samples. In this working paper we zoom in on three important practice areas related to plant clinics. • Plant clinic operations and local plant clinic adaptations that emerged to improve performance, reach, quality, effectiveness and impact. • Inclusion in plant clinic services, addressing the needs of diverse farmers in Uganda and, more specifically, gender issues. • Embedding and institutionalization of plant clinics in policies, procedures and practices of the organizations and institutions of which they are part. Plantwise has achieved a lot in Uganda in three years. The plant clinic expansion has happened very quickly. The number of plant doctors trained is impressive. A total of 145 plant clinics are now established in four regions of Uganda. There are plant clinics in 71 of the 112 districts in these regions, operating at different levels as they become established. The plant clinics are either run by the district local government or non- governmental organizations, or run by both in order to share the responsibilities of coordinating and making resources and staff available as plant doctors. 6 Uganda’s journey towards institutionalising inclusive plant health services 7 The case studies show that, in Uganda, there is no such thing as ‘the plant clinic’. Many unplanned plant clinic adaptations have emerged; changes made to the plant clinic model to make it fit the local context, to remain or become more relevant, performing, inclusive and sustainable. Some of the local adaptations are district-wide or particular to the local implementing organization, and concern multiple plant clinics, others are plant clinic-specific. Currently, adaptations mainly contribute to increased reach and proximity, but they could potentially contribute