PATRICIA EIYO-ELOTU

PATRICIA EIYO-ELOTU - UGANDA
Teaching Ugandan Women Farmers to Grow Sustainable Cash Crops

U.N. WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME
www.wfp.org/countries/uganda

“Spending my early childhood from the ages of 7-15 as a refugee in exile (Southern Sudan) has had a great impact in my life.” Patricia Eiyo-Elotu will never forget being a refugee from her native Northern Uganda, living under the threat of starvation and hostile southern Sudanense neighbors. These experiences shaped her desire to help others produce enough food to stabilize their lives. That northern Uganda has remained in turmoil for the last 20 years has only reinforced her goal to help this region achieve stable food and income sources.

A trained scientist with a Masters degree in Environmental and Natural Resource Management, Patricia joined the U.N. World Food Program (WFP) to work on small holder farm programs. In 2005, the U.N. WFP established a partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to create the Purchase for Progress (PFP). This program focuses on small farmers, particularly with women heads of families, who are responsible for 60 percent of the country’s crops despite traditionally not being allowed to inherit land and only 70 percent achieving primary school education.

Now as Programme Assistant working with the WFP and PFP in Uganda, Patricia enables poor women farmers to upgrade critical skills. These women can then apply new technical, general education, and business basics training to sustainable farming. Additionally over the next few years, WFP and PFP will provide more profitable market access as they purchase about 36,000 metric tons of cereal grains from 18,000 small farmers of which at least 9,000 will be women. The result will be farmers earn an average of an extra US $50 annually, as well as they will have better education for their families, better paying jobs and healthier lives and communities.

Patricia says “I envision strengthening and improving competitiveness and livelihoods of small holder farmers by forming cooperatives which can scale up production, post harvest production technologies, processing and storage facilities. The co-ops can then access reliable markets with the World Food Programme, so that surplus crops are sold at competitive prices. Farmers, families and communities then reap the benefits of better health, education, and income.”