Agriculture accounts for 30% of the gross domestic product (GDP) of EA and it employs over 60% of the population of East Africa. In East Africa, it is reported to have annual value of $50b and this represents a 75% of the Agricultural products being traded from the commodities like maize, rice, potatoes, cassava, beans, wheat among others.
Agricultural performance is critically important to pro-poor growth since it employs over 75% of EAC member population, where the majority of them live in rural settings. The sector provides a basis for improvement of livelihoods in both rural and urban populations.
Despite the importance of the sector to the EAC economies, reviews of public expenditures and programmes that was recently conducted by Civil Society Budget group and other partners like Action Aid, Uganda Debt Network, Food Rights Alliance and ESAFF, indicates that, the input and output from Agriculture has continuously kept declining where inputs being the lowest in the sectors of the economy and is registered being below the National Development Plan target of 4.9% for the case of Uganda.
Besides the decline in the East Africa member states with an exception of Rwanda have not prioritised Agriculture in their public spending to the extent that the sector receives less than 4% of the national budgets.
This, therefore, calls for the Government and other partners to ensure that there is increased public financing for the sector in East Africa and need to invest more in Agriculture to better support the economies.
The integration of the regional markets in east Africa will open opportunities to balance regional supply and demand and this opens up incentives for increased productivity.
Source: newvision.co.ug
