Building Resilience and Livelihoods with Agroforestry in Uganda

Made by leading Ugandan documentarist Nathan Ochole, this film explains what agroforestry is and the myriad of contributions that it has made to Uganda. It starts in the highlands of Kabale, where trees on farms prevented landslides and floods, provided fruit to villagers and made their agriculture more sustainable. It then roams to the parklands of northern Uganda where Borassus palms and Shea trees provide valuable nutrition and cash earnings (particularly for women in the case of Shea) and improve the yields of the crops grown near them. It visits Kapchorwa where we see the use of the nitrogen-fixing shrub Calliandra as feed for dairy cows and then documents the improvements that orange trees have made to livelihoods in Namatumba.

Along the way, the film interviews farmers as well as Dr Clement Okia, the representative of the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in Uganda, and Dr Hilary Agaba, Programme Leader Agroforestry at Uganda’s National Forestry Resources Research Institute (NaFORRI NARO). It was produced by Cathy Watson, formerly of Tree Talk and Muvle Trust in Uganda and now Head of Programme Development at ICRAF, and by Australian AVID volunteer, Laura Keenan.