Meet Steven Aikiriza

Steven Aikiriza, a livestock production coach and Uganda coordinator for NEADAP in Uganda, is a man with a mission. Born and raised on a smallholder farm in Southwestern Uganda, Aikiriza is a practising professional livestock and crop farmer, dairy technologist, and animal production technologist by training. His previous role at SNV as the dairy Advisor and head of Extension, Training and dairy Advisory Services called TEA, saw him work with a deliberate effort to increase dairy productivity through practical knowledge dissemination.

In his role as the Uganda Coordinator for NEADAP, Aikiriza is responsible for liaising between the solution leads in NEADAP and the dairy value chain stakeholders to support collaboration, searching for new opportunities, networking, and synergy.

Aikiriza's academic and research background, combined with his extensive practical experience in the dairy sector, has informed his work at NEADAP. He holds a Master of Business Administration from East and Southern African Management Institute-ESAMI, with a research background in dairy technology-fermented milk manufacturing, Livestock feeds sector in Uganda and the impact of the dairy value chain on the environment in Uganda.

According to Aikiriza, Uganda's dairy productivity is the cheapest in the world because of low input and low output. The key issues facing the Uganda dairy sector currently include low numbers of commercial dairy farmers, low milk production/supply levels per unit, low milk consumption per capita, dairy marketing that depends more on the export market than local consumption, high dairy export low uptake and adoption rate by private and public institutions of tested and proven practices and technologies to improve production and productivity.

To address these challenges, NEADAP's approach in Uganda is focused on ensuring sustainable adoption and scaling of products and services that will attract public and non-government participation to scale, such as school milk and yoghurt feeding program, feed ration formulation for the dairy herd, cooperative-led dairy extension services, milk quality-based milk payment system, the forage production agenda, skilling for young dairy professionals, and market systems development.

NEADAP engages local communities and stakeholders through, exchanging learnings, documentation of successes, and sharing lessons learned through reporting using the internet and face-to-face learning. Aikiriza's mission is to transform Uganda's dairy sector, one farmer at a time, and his passion for the industry is evident in his work at NEADAP.

If you have questions or ideas, write Steven Aikiriza at saikiriza@snv.org