- 1 - More Than Income : Pro - Poor Livestock Development Policy in Uganda

ABOUT LADDER LADDER is a research project funded by the Policy Research Programme of the UK Department for International Development (DFID) that seeks to identify alternative routes by which the rural poor can climb out of poverty. LADDER is working with nearly 40 villages and 1,200 households in Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi and Kenya to discover the blocking and enabling agencies in the institutional environment facing rural people that hinder or help their quest for better standards of living for themselves and their families. This working paper represents work-in-progress and the reader is advised that it has not been subjected to academic quality control, nor edited for errors of fact or interpretation. The paper forms part of a mosaic of research findings that will contribute towards an overall picture of rural livelihoods and micro-macro links to poverty policies in the case-study countries. The findings and views expressed here are solely the responsibility of the authors and are not attributable to DFID. If you wish your name to be added to or taken off the mailing list for the LADDER WPs, or to obtain the papers only for specific countries, please Summary Since 1996, Uganda has prioritised poverty eradication as its major development goal. This paper asks how livestock and the livestock sub-sector can best contribute to the overall goal of poverty reduction in Uganda, and in particular how best government can support that contribution. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in three agricultural districts, it describes the current livestock situation in Uganda in terms of the numbers, types and distributions of livestock, and then by elaborating on who keeps livestock in Uganda, why they do so, and what problems they face. Based on this understanding, the paper questions the assumption that livestock sub-sector contributions to poverty reduction are necessarily mediated through increasing livestock production and livestock income. It argues that in focusing on production and livestock income, current livestock policy approaches pay insufficient attention to the wider roles of livestock in contributing to rural livelihoods, and thereby miss opportunities to enhance the contribution of livestock, and livestock development, to poverty reduction. The paper then considers what this means for approaches to livestock development in Uganda, and wonders whether it is time for a national livestock sub-sector policy which states clearly the rationale for livestock development and the ways in which government expect it to contribute to its wider poverty reduction goals. It further …