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It is quite a challenge to develop a major domestic industry that brings public and private investors together and also nurtures the interests of small-scale producers. An IFAD-funded project in Uganda is rising to that challenge by helping to forge a highly innovative partnership between small-scale producers of palm oil and a private sector operator. With the project’s support Uganda has progressed in a decade from almost total dependence on vegetable oil imports to development of a thriving domestic production sector that has a promising potential for foreign trade. And the country has seen a significant improvement in people’s nutrition as well.

In 2000, Iranian film director Abbas Kiarostami received an invitation from IFAD to document the plight of nearly two million Ugandan orphans whose families had been devastated by HIV/AIDs. Kiarostami’s acclaimed documentary ABC Africa was the result. Inside ABC Africa, to be featured on an upcoming DVD release of ABC Africa, is the story behind the making of Kiarostami’s film.

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A decade of political and civil strife in Uganda left the economy in shambles and the rural population even deeper in poverty. Rural family health, water supply and sanitation in the late 1980s became alarming; the status of health services was for the most part inoperational, and the road network was in ruins. Of special concern were the districts of Hoima and Kibaale.

The Ugandan Women's Effort to Save Orphans (UWESO) is an NGO created in 1986, with the aim of assisting approximately 1.03 million people under the age of 17 who became orphans during the mid-1970s civil war. Since then, many more children have become orphans mainly losing parents to AIDS. Approved by IFAD/BSF in 1994, the UWESO Development Project (UDP) was designed to help the NGO assist these young people and their foster parents/guardians

When Dr. Jenn Brenner first volunteered to work in Uganda, she was distressed to find most of the children in hospital dying from preventable diseases. “As a doctor I felt quite helpless”, she says. But she doesn’t feel that way any more.

The Amina Edeke Farmers' Association in the village of Odudui, a trading center in rural Uganda, is a small organization of just 3 men and 3 women. The association was formed with the goal of working together to fight poverty and famine. In 1999, under the leadership of Mr. John Opola, the association decided to take up sunflower production and processing with help from EnterpriseWorks and Appropriate Technology (Uganda). The association managed to get a loan of 600,000 Uganda shillings from a non-profit development organization, and bought a new oilseed press and raw sunflower seeds to process