NAGRC&DB is one of the government agencies that is working around the clock to create wealth for Ugandan through practically skilling them in business enterprise development. Apiculture being one of the environmentally friendly poverty eradication strategies, aspiring apiary farmers from all over the country are trained at Aswa ranch in aspects of bee keeping.
The apiary enterprise at Aswa ranch is at extensive level with a good number of Kenya Top Bars (KTB) and Longstroth bee hives well colonized. The environment favours mainly Apis mellifera adansonii bee species which is the common African bee. The most common bee forage is naturally growing sheer tree together with the artificially planted Calliandra calothyrsus
Objective
The main objective of this apiculture intervention is to introduce a participatory market-oriented modern beekeeping enterprise as an income-generating activity for NAGRC&DB and apiary farmers in the surrounding communities and others interested to complement their income country wide.
Conservation
There is also need to intervene in the promoting and spear heading conservation of the African bee specie, in particular the Ugandan Apis mellifera adansonii which is threatened by the wide spread commercialization of beekeeping endangering the locally adapted sub-species. The conservation will be both by cryopreservation and in-situ.
NAGRC&DB’s proposed Interventions/Export/Value added oriented Enterprises
NAGRC&DB’s intervention on apiculture is to appraise the entire value chain of the enterprise in order to improve production, processing and value addition through usage of modern apiculture practices to be the sources of valuable strength to countless numbers of rural people’s livelihoods. These include:
- Mapping of priority apiary value chains (agro-processing) and preparing apiary investment and value addition action plans
- Creating / establishing a framework for public-private sector partnership for co-ordinated development of the strategic apiary industry
- Strategically setting up regional apiary centers of excellence and upscale to a National apiary center of excellence.
- Enhancing the technical and management competencies of the staff and farmers in apiary by establishing Aswa regional training center.
- Conducting awareness seminars among various stakeholders including national and regional politicians, NGOs, private sector, policy technocrats, to ensure apiary development agenda is accorded priority in resource allocation.
- Aligning science, technology and innovation infrastructure to meet the needs of apiary development in the country. This will entail a reviewing of apiary regional innovation systems and creating instruments / incentives to enhance triple helix collaboration between universities, private partners and government agencies.
- Facilitation of networking among research institutions and academia for best practice sharing, and building partnership for collaborative, technology and innovation initiatives in apiary.
- Supporting the establishment of an apiary Centre of Excellence in Technology Transfer and Innovation
- Creating a competitive production and business environment to enhance competitiveness position with the international manufactured apiary products. Export promotion infrastructure such as special apiary economic zones will be developed along major economic corridors to facilitate integrated production and cross-border linkages.
- Developing apiary quality assurance, product certification and traceability schemes for manufactured apiary products to meet regional and international market requirements.
- Developing strategy to support the enhancement of packaging and branding of manufactured apiary products within NAGRC&DB and out growers
