Uganda’s agricultural policy evolution between 1975 and 2009 offers a natural experiment in how post-conflict, liberalising economies attempt to transform a subsistence-dominated sector into an engine of broad-based growth. Merging archival policy documents, five national household surveys, and district-level production data, this paper reconstructs the sequence of reforms—from the 1975–80 state grain monopolies, through the structural-adjustment divestiture of the 1990s, to the 2001–09 Plan for Modernisation of Agriculture (PMA) and its district-level NAADS extension reforms.

A synthetic-control difference-in-differences strategy shows that liberalisation raised export crop revenue per rural capita by 18% relative to a synthetic Uganda, but yields of food staples stagnated and income inequality widened within the rural sector.

Institutional analysis:

Institutional analysis reveals that the PMA’s demand-driven extension model increased technology uptake among the top tercile of farmers yet failed to reach female-headed households and the poor; average extension contact fell from 1.3 to 0.7 visits per farmer between 2005 and 2008 as fiscal space contracted. Meanwhile, real public agricultural spending per farmer declined 38% over 1995–2005, while input markets remained thin: only 4% of maize farmers accessed improved seed by 2008.

Three durable constraints:

The study identifies three durable constraints:

(i) political economy incentives that privilege short-term export taxes over long-term productivity investment;

(ii) a fiscal architecture that channels donor funds through parallel project units, fragmenting service delivery; and

(iii) land tenure insecurity that suppresses long-term on-farm investment.

Forward-looking scenario analysis:

Looking forward, scenario analysis indicates that closing the yield gap for key staples to regional frontier levels could lift 1.9 million Ugandans out of poverty by 2030, but requires reallocating at least 6% of the national budget to agriculture, integrating input subsidy vouchers with targeted extension, and legislating a tradable land-use certificate to crowd in private irrigation finance.

Conclusion:

The paper concludes that without embedded political bargains that prioritise smallholder productivity over revenue extraction, future flagship programmes risk repeating the stop–go cycle that has characterised Ugandan agricultural policy for four decades.