Introdution and Background
| Introduction In Lira District, like the rest of the 45 Districts in Uganda,
most families live in abject poverty in spite of the fairly rich land resource,
favorable climate and market opportunities surrounding them. The major cause of this perpetual poverty is lack of adequate knowledge about the possible opportunities and the practical skills to improve their own situation within the resources available to them. This project is therefore carefully designed and intended to mobilize households, train them and empower them to use the available resources to lead an increasingly better quality of life. The model project will do this by promoting two very important perennial crops: bananas for food security and coffee for raising family incomes. The project will start in 2 subcounties as a model and then spread throughout Lira District. |
 IRFF farm in Uganda |
Lira District is located in Northern Uganda approximately 200 kilometers from the nation capital, Uganda. It is bordered to the north by Arua, Gulu and Kitgum, districts that are heavily destabilized by insurgency and persistent insecurity since 1986. These incursions always spill over to Lira, which itself only came out of insurgency and insecurity in about 1992 after six years of destruction and suffering.
The district has a population of 650,000 with an ever-increasing pressure of security and economic refugees from neighboring districts.
It has a good climate with an average of 1,200 millimeters rainfall annually which can support a wide range of crops.
Lira's economic base has always been on annual crops largely, cotton, simsim, groundnuts, millet and beans. With the clear and burn farming method, much of the land has been degraded by the reliance on annual crops whose yield and value have continued to fall.
This has meant that the 98% of the families who live on the land and depend on it for survival have continued to get poorer and poorer.
Scope of the project
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The project will target 2 sub counties and will aim at assisting the following:
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 Lira District. One side for the IRFF 2000 project |