UNCDF, with support from the government of Sweden, has partnered with Nilecom, Mezzanine, and Cordaid to support farmers in Northern Uganda grow incomes leveraging digital agricultural services. The consortium aims to adapt and scale up the UgFarmer digital agriculture application to improve efficiency, access and utilisation of actionable information, markets, management of payments and inventory.

Acknowledging the critical role of farmer organizations, the project seeks to support cooperatives and producer organizations to perform better, thereby creating positive dividends for the 100,000 farmers (60,000 women and 40,000 men) by addressing bottlenecks in their service delivery.

To ensure women and men equally benefit from the digital innovation interventions, the consortium set out to understand the factors underpinning the digital inequalities in Uganda through focus group discussions and key informant interviews during the first quarter of 2021. Earlier project baseline study had highlighted disproportionate access to mobile phones and internet use, with the study aimed at informing interventions to reduce such inequalities.

The study sought to understand the root causes fueling disproportionate constraints that women face while accessing and using digital services. It is important to decrease the digital divide for women and girls to improve women’s economic opportunities and help transform women into the builders of emerging digital economies.

This publication shares insights gathered from this exercise and potential corrective interventions learning from previous and ongoing initiatives by UNCDF and other stakeholders in the industry.