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PigSmart provides smallholder farmers with the right advice at the right time
When pig farmers get timely, practical information on feeding, breeding, and maintaining the health of their pigs, both productivity and income grow.
Useful for
- Development programs and NGOs
- Extension services
- Farmers and livestock keepers
- Governments
What’s the challenge?
Pig farming is a vital source of income and food security for more than 1 million households in Uganda. Yet productivity remains low.
Farmers need practical guidance on feeding, herd health, disease prevention, and breeding, but agricultural trainers and advisors are not always able to provide this information when it is most useful. An occasional visit from an extension officer or a multi-day training may cover many practices at once, including information farmers cannot immediately apply. By the time a particular practice becomes relevant — such as weaning piglets — the farmer may have forgotten guidance received months earlier.
Limited extension coverage, language barriers, and a lack of low-literacy formats compound the problem. Farmers therefore need practical, contextually relevant advice delivered at the right stage of the production cycle, when they can immediately put it into practice.
What’s the solution?
PigSmart is a digitally enabled extension solution that delivers the right information at the right time, enabling smallholder pig farmers to immediately apply advice as it becomes relevant to their enterprise.
Developed by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), PigSmart provides timely guidance on feeding, herd health, breeding and genetics, manure management, and heat stress — as aligned with the pig production cycle. Rather than overwhelming farmers with information they may only need months later, PigSmart delivers practical advice when it can be acted upon.
Guidance reaches farmers through SMS, smartphone-equipped extension agents, printed materials, and training supported by audio skits in Luganda — the language widely used in the country’s Central Region — making information timely, accessible, and locally relevant.
Want to use this in your work?
Contact our experts
Edwin Kangethe
Innovation and Scaling Advisor • Impact at Scale (CGIAR System Organization)
Contributors
- All Across Africa
- Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT
- CGIAR Trust Fund (CGIAR)
- International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)
- Makerere University (MU)
- Masaka, Mukono, Mpigi, and Wakiso District Local Governments, Uganda
- Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (Uganda) (MAAIF)
What impact has been achieved so far?
PigSmart was co-designed with pig value chain actors and district stakeholders, building on more than a decade of research by ILRI. The platform was first rolled out in 2024 in Uganda’s Central Region through the CGIAR Sustainable Animal Productivity for Livelihoods, Nutrition and Gender Inclusion initiative.
An endline survey showed meaningful improvements in knowledge and adoption of good husbandry practices among farmers who had been trained on PigSmart content. Notably, trained farmers were more likely to use need-based deworming plans (80.8% vs. 70.8% of untrained farmers) and to raise the roof of pig pens to alleviate heat stress (67.8% vs. 55.9% of untrained farmers).
Government and private sector partners have since adopted PigSmart independently: Uganda’s Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries used the platform to train veterinary extension officers, and the social enterprise All Across Africa incorporated its resources into training for rural pig farmers.
Who can use, support, and scale this solution?
Pig farmers and livestock keepers can use PigSmart to access practical, timely guidance on feeding, health, breeding, and manure management — via audio skits, extension agents, or group training sessions.
Extension workers and veterinary agents can use PigSmart’s audio skits, feed calculators, and printed materials to deliver structured training to farmer groups, multiplying the platform’s reach.
Governments, development programs, and NGOs can integrate PigSmart into existing livestock programs to build farmer capacity at scale, as demonstrated by the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries and All Across Africa.
