Bukalasa Agricultural College, Uganda’s premier training hub for farm extension staff, is facing a severe staffing crisis and security vulnerabilities, threatening to undermine its recent multi-billion-shilling infrastructure upgrade and curriculum overhaul.
Despite its elevation to an Agricultural Centre of Excellence, the institute is struggling with an acute shortage of lecturers, particularly in its core technical departments.
Speaking during the college’s 60th graduation ceremony on May 29, 2026, the College Principal, Mr Gelvan Kisolo Lule, revealed that the acute staff deficit has severely strained the institution’s capacity to deliver quality, hands-on training.
“Our teaching staff is inadequate compared to the approved structure, particularly in the Animal Husbandry section, which hampers our ability to deliver quality education,” Mr Kisolo Lule said. “Some of the college staff who have retired from service have not been replaced, creating massive gaps.”
The college, which currently boasts a student population of over 2,000 learners, has only about 40 academic staff members on its roster. These few lecturers are expected to manage teaching loads, practical laboratory work, and field supervision across six heavily demanding departments: crop science, animal science, horticulture, human nutrition, agribusiness Management, management studies.
Sources from the College Governing Council, speaking on condition of anonymity, further revealed that a significant section of the current academic staff is working on a part-time basis and is not accommodated on the government payroll, creating sustainability challenges for the institution.
The staffing constraints come at a time when the college is transitioning to a more demanding, practical-heavy curriculum. In 2023, President Yoweri Museveni commissioned new infrastructure worth Shs40 billion at the college under the World Bank-funded Uganda Skills Development Project (USDP).
Alongside these physical structures, a revised competence-based assessment curriculum was introduced, placing greater emphasis on hands-on practical skills over classroom theory. However, college authorities note that executing this practical-heavy curriculum effectively requires a full complement of technical supervisors, which the college currently lacks.
Beyond the lecture rooms, the college leadership expressed deep worry over the security of the newly acquired multi-billion-shilling facilities. The entire campus, located in Wobulenzi Town Council, Luweero District, lacks a security perimeter wall, leaving high-tech equipment exposed to vandals and intruders.
“The government and partners extended advanced equipment and rehabilitated our farm infrastructure, but the property remains exposed due to the absence of a perimeter wall,” Mr Kisolo Lule told this publication in an interview. “Both our land, which is now vulnerable to encroachment, and the expensive machinery remain at great risk.”
During the ceremony, a total of 1,195 farm extensionists were awarded diplomas and certificates in various agricultural disciplines.
Responding to the concerns, Ms Mary Aacha Orikiriza, the Under Secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF), assured the college that the government remains fully committed to strengthening agricultural training.
Ms. Orikiriza, who represented the MAAIF Permanent Secretary, Maj Gen (rtd) David Kasura Kyomukama, commended Bukalasa for its historical role in churning out the human resource vital for Uganda’s agricultural economy.
“The government remains committed to supporting agricultural training institutions and strengthening extension services, research, and innovation to improve productivity,” Ms. Orikiriza said.
“The challenges highlighted will be relayed to the relevant authorities, and the human resource constraints will be addressed over time.”
As an immediate intervention to the college’s logistical challenges, the Permanent Secretary’s message pledged that the ministry would deliver a new double-cabin pickup vehicle at the start of the 2026/2027 Financial Year. Furthermore, the ministry noted that plans are underway to speed up the restructuring of agricultural training institutions across the country to align them with global market demands.
The staffing crisis at Bukalasa mirrors a larger systemic bottleneck within Uganda’s agricultural sector.
According to the National Agricultural Extension Strategy launched by MAAIF in 2019, the country requires a minimum of 12,036 public agricultural extension workers to effectively drive an agricultural revolution and eliminate fundamental farming challenges.
Currently, Uganda’s extension-worker-to-farmer ratio stands at a dismal 1:1,800. This falls critically short of the global standard of 1:500 recommended by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), leaving millions of smallholder farmers without the technical guidance needed to boost commercial productivity.