Uganda’s agricultural sector—comprising 40% of national GDP and employing 70% of the population—faces a critical financing gap where only 11% of farmers access formal credit despite 58% achieving formal financial inclusion through informal channels and savings groups. This paradox reflects fundamental institutional market failures: commercial banks allocate less than 10% of credit to agriculture, charging 14.5-17.5% interest rates prohibitive for smallholder farmers with subsistence-level incomes. Cooperatives bridge this gap through multi-layered financing mechanisms combining government-backed programs, SACCO lending, development partner grants, and innovative collateral structures. The Government of Uganda has deployed approximately UGX 865 billion in agricultural financing since 2009 through the Agricultural Credit Facility (ACF), Parish Development Model (PDM), Emyooga wealth creation initiative, and emerging large-scale farmer schemes. This infrastructure extension dramatically reduces financing costs—PDM SACCOs charge 5-6% annually compared to commercial banks’ 15-17%—while tailoring products to agricultural cycles and cooperative members’ production patterns. This report examines how cooperatives access loans and grants across government programs, the comparative advantages and constraints of different financing sources, and the mechanisms through which this financing ecosystem is transforming Uganda’s agricultural transformation from subsistence to commercial production.
The Agricultural Financing Gap: Market Structure and Cooperative Responses
Uganda’s agricultural credit market reveals stark institutional asymmetries that make cooperative participation essential for smallholder farmers. Agriculture comprises 40% of GDP and employs 70% of the population—over 26 million rural residents dependent on farming for livelihoods—yet formal credit allocation reflects agricultural sector neglect. As of 2018, formal banks directed only 12.2% of their total lending to agriculture, and of that agricultural credit, only one-third (approximately 4% of total banking sector credit) supported primary production rather than agricultural trade and services. In contrast, the services sector received approximately 50% of annual formal credit allocation, demonstrating systematic bias favoring sectors with urban concentration and formally employed borrowers.
This financial exclusion reflects rational profit-maximizing behavior by commercial banks given their institutional structure and cost bases. Individual smallholder farmers operate at scales—cultivating 1-10 acres, generating annual cash incomes of UGX 3-15 million ($800-4,000 USD)—making standardized bank credit products unprofitable: loan processing costs exceed expected margins on small advances, collateral requirements cannot be met through land titles or formal assets, and weather-dependent production creates perceived credit risk exceeding banks’ acceptable default thresholds. Furthermore, geographic dispersion requires branch networks with uneconomic operating costs in rural areas where transaction density cannot support branch profitability.
Cooperatives overcome these market failures through institutional structures enabling profitable service delivery to populations commercial banks systematically exclude. Member-owned SACCOs eliminate profit maximization pressures, enabling operations at volumes and margins commercial banks abandon. Geographical networks of community-based cooperatives provide financial access without requiring expensive branch infrastructure. Collateral innovation through group guarantees and warehouse receipts converts cooperative membership and future production into bankable collateral, replacing land title requirements. And cooperative focus on member rather than shareholder welfare creates incentive alignment where loan terms reflect member circumstances rather than standardized products.
Government-Backed Cooperative Financing: The Tier-One Financing Ecosystem
The Government of Uganda has established multiple cooperative-linked financing programs constituting a tiered system where different programs serve farmers at different commercialization stages and capital requirements.
Agricultural Credit Facility (ACF): Large-Scale Agricultural Transformation
The Agricultural Credit Facility, established in 2009, represents Uganda’s primary government intervention targeting agricultural modernization and agro-processing development. The ACF operates as a wholesale credit facility administered by the Bank of Uganda, providing coordinated financing through partner financial institutions including Uganda Development Bank Ltd (UDBL), Micro Deposit Taking Institutions, and credit institutions. Since 2012, the ACF has disbursed over UGX 800 billion (approximately $221 million USD), representing sustained government commitment to agricultural transformation.
The ACF’s structure reflects risk-sharing between government and commercial lenders. Government contributes 50% of the revolving loan pool as capital guarantee, while participating financial institutions provide the remaining 50%, creating co-investment incentives for institution risk assessment and portfolio quality. The facility maintains consistent 10-12% interest rates across implementation phases, substantially below market rates where commercial banks charge 14.5-17.5%, yet sufficient to cover operational costs and reasonable institution margins.
However, ACF eligibility criteria reveal its orientation toward medium-scale commercial farmers rather than subsistence producers. Maximum loan amounts reach UGX 2.1-5 billion, with average loan sizes of UGX 640 million, indicating targeting toward farmers with substantial productive capacity, mechanization investment requirements, and agro-processing operations. Loan applicants must demonstrate “upgraded or bankable farming projects,” requiring business plans, financial records, and productivity evidence that majority of subsistence farmers cannot provide. This premium on commercialization effectively excludes 80% of Uganda’s smallholder farmer population who operate below commercial viability thresholds.
The ACF’s impact in absolute terms remains substantial: annual disbursements of approximately UGX 130 billion contribute meaningfully to agricultural credit access, yet represent only 10% of total agricultural lending, revealing the ACF’s complementary role within broader financing ecosystems. The facility’s documented success with cooperatives reflects that organized farmer groups can aggregate small holdings into sufficiently large commercial entities justifying loan structuring efforts. UDBL’s Farmer Groups Cooperative scheme exemplifies this approach, accepting aggregated loans from 50-400 member cooperatives, charging concessional 10% interest rates, and accepting reduced collateral requirements in exchange for cooperative group guarantees.
Parish Development Model: Targeting Subsistence Farmers
The Parish Development Model, launched in February 2022, represents the Government of Uganda’s most explicit intervention targeting subsistence farmers systematically excluded from previous financing mechanisms. Rather than focusing on commercial transformation through large loans, the PDM takes a village-level approach, establishing Parish SACCOs within smallest administrative units (parishes) and distributing capital directly to community-based financial institutions.
The PDM’s scale demonstrates transformative ambition. Phase One established 10,585 parish SACCOs and disbursed approximately $239 million (UGX 850+ billion) to qualifying households, with individual household allocations of approximately $270 (UGX 950,000) and parish allocations of $27,000 (UGX 96 million). By fiscal year 2023/24, government credited UGX 16.683 billion across all PDM SACCOs in a single fiscal year, demonstrating sustained resource commitment. Of 10,585 registered households, 7,950 (75%) actively accessed SACCO funds, with women comprising 53% of beneficiaries, reflecting explicit gender inclusion targeting.
The financing terms represent paradigm shift toward affordability. PDM SACCOs charge interest rates of 5-6% per annum on loans up to UGX 1-5 million with repayment terms of 3 years and grace periods of 2-3 years. For subsistence farmers unaccustomed to formal credit, these rates represent 67-75% reduction versus commercial bank rates (14.5-17.5%), translating to UGX 50,000-150,000 annual savings on typical loans, or weeks of additional household consumption possibility.
Critically, PDM financing shifts collateral paradigms. Rather than land titles or formal property, PDM loans rely on household member participation in training programs, enterprise group membership, and co-guarantee obligations where community members collectively guarantee each other’s repayment. This social collateral model transforms financial access: farmers in land tenure-insecure regions or lacking formal documentation gain credit access through community reputation and commitment. Government explicitly directs no commissions be charged to beneficiaries, ensuring PDM SACCO overhead doesn’t reduce funds available for on-lending.
The PDM’s subsistence-to-commercial transformation objective manifests through loan structuring aligned with small enterprise development. Farmers access modest credit enabling agricultural input purchases, cottage industry equipment (tea drying, coffee processing), or petty trade expansion—investments generating sufficient returns to sustain repayment and gradual commercialization trajectory. Over multi-loan cycles, members accumulate savings and demonstrate creditworthiness enabling graduation to larger cooperative loans or ACF financing.
Emyooga Presidential Wealth Creation Initiative
The Emyooga Presidential Initiative on Wealth and Job Creation, launched in August 2019, represents an alternative government approach emphasizing occupational specialization and enterprise-based SACCO formation. Unlike PDM’s geographic (parish) organization, Emyooga establishes constituency-based SACCOs across 18 occupational categories—bodaboda riders, market vendors, journalists, artisans, farmers, and others—recognizing that financial inclusion requires product customization for distinct occupational cash flows and business cycles.
The scale achieves remarkable coverage: by 2021, 6,394 constituency-based Emyooga SACCOs had been established across 347 constituencies within 146 districts, receiving government allocations between UGX 30-50 million per SACCO. Member contributions of UGX 20,000 coupled with cooperative share purchases at UGX 150,000 create ownership commitment and institutional sustainability. By April 2021, Emyooga SACCO members had accumulated UGX 9.9 billion in savings, demonstrating genuine financial participation beyond passive fund reception.
Emyooga interest rates of 8-12% represent middle-ground positioning between PDM’s 5-6% and commercial bank rates, reflecting the initiative’s orientation toward microenterprises generating sufficient cash flows to support slightly higher financing costs than subsistence agriculture. Government’s interest rate positioning acknowledges that bodaboda operators with daily UGX 30,000-80,000 earnings, market traders, and artisans differ fundamentally from subsistence farmers in repayment capacity and loan utilization patterns.
The initiative’s transformation impact materializes through documented case studies. Women entrepreneurs in Kabarole District utilized Emyooga SACCO loans of UGX 3-10 million to establish restaurants, liquid soap manufacturing, and herbal processing operations, purchasing productive assets and transitioning from informal sector vulnerability to formalized business operation. Beneficiaries reported capacity to complete business investments, reinvest profits, and access larger subsequent loans through demonstrated repayment discipline—a progression trajectory PDM equally enables through phased lending growth.
Governance structure positions Emyooga SACCOs as member-controlled institutions, with enterprise group associations making decisions regarding fund allocation, project priorities, and infrastructure investment. This democratic governance transforms financial institutions from top-down government programs into community-managed entities with member accountability, creating sustainability mechanisms exceeding projects where beneficiaries passively receive government disbursements.
Large-Scale Farmer Government Financing Scheme
A December 2024 government initiative signals evolving financing strategy targeting commercial-scale farmers (50+ acres) with interest-free loans. PostBank Uganda, Pride Bank, and Housing Finance Bank received authority to disburse UGX 176 billion principal amount to qualifying cooperatives and farming enterprises, with government directly funding UGX 40 billion in annual interest costs, effectively rendering loans interest-free. Eligibility requirements—minimum 50 acres and production targets of 132,600 metric tons across staple crops—indicate targeting toward aggregated cooperative operations rather than individual smallholders.
This newest scheme demonstrates government acknowledgment that commercial-scale agricultural operations require long-term capital beyond traditional SACCO capacity, while remaining dependent on concessional government financing given capital intensity of 50+ acre operations and commodity price volatility.
Cooperative-Administered Financing: SACCOs as Agricultural Credit Infrastructure
Beyond government-backed programs implemented through cooperatives, SACCOs themselves constitute independent agricultural financing sources reflecting cooperative member capital mobilization and internally-generated earnings reinvestment.
SACCO Interest Rate Advantages and Loan Structures
Agricultural SACCOs operating independent of government programs maintain competitive lending rates of 10-15% per annum, substantially below commercial bank rates of 14.5-17.5%. The effective rate on reducing balance calculations (approximately 7.5%) creates tangible savings: on a UGX 1 million loan over 48 months, SACCO financing costs UGX 150,000-200,000 less in interest than commercial banking, a substantial sum for farmers with monthly cash incomes of UGX 150,000-300,000.
SACCO loan sizing demonstrates flexibility accommodating diverse farmer needs. Loans range from UGX 5 million for seasonal agricultural inputs to UGX 500 million for equipment, infrastructure, or input dealer operations, with repayment terms spanning 6 months to 4 years calibrated to agricultural production cycles. This flexibility contrasts sharply with standardized commercial bank products assuming formal sector regular monthly incomes, with inflexible repayment schedules poorly matching agricultural income seasonality.
Collateral approaches distinguish SACCO lending from commercial banking. Rather than land title requirements, SACCOs accept group guarantees where cooperative member cohesion creates mutual accountability mechanisms exceeding formal property pledges in certain contexts. The innovative “tripartite system” links Rural Producer Organizations (farmers), Area Cooperative Enterprises (marketing cooperatives), and SACCOs, converting future harvest proceeds into present-day bankable collateral: farmers secure loans against commodity buyer contracts guaranteeing harvest purchases at predetermined prices, with SACCO funds available against buyer-verified production achievement.
This collateral innovation fundamentally expands credit access. Where land title systems fail—in regions with tenure insecurity, communal land, or female farmers systematically excluded from formal property rights—tripartite systems enable credit access through production relationships rather than property registration.
Uganda Cooperative Alliance Area Cooperative Enterprise (ACE) Model
The Uganda Cooperative Alliance has pioneered a documented cooperative-centered agricultural financing model systematically linking producer organizations, marketing enterprises, and financial institutions. The ACE model, established in 1998, has achieved measurable reach: 66 farmer cooperatives have been mobilized, encompassing approximately 64,346 farmer members organized around key commodity value chains including maize, coffee, rice, livestock, cotton, banana, apiary, and pineapples.
The ACE structure creates financing capacity through value chain integration. Rather than cooperatives functioning as standalone savings institutions, ACEs operate as marketing enterprises aggregating cooperative member production, conducting quality standardization, and accessing buyer contracts guaranteeing commodity purchases. This marketing function transforms cooperative lending capacity: cooperatives extend credit knowing repayment derives from buyer payments for marketed production, reducing credit risk assessment burden and enabling confident lending.
Empirical research validates the ACE model’s effectiveness in expanding credit access. Studies documented that cooperative membership directly facilitated farmers’ ability to access ACF credit, with application processes and collateral requirements becoming manageable through organizational structures, audited accounts, and production aggregation demonstrating cooperative viability. Cooperatives provided credibility signals that individual farmers could not match, effectively serving as institutional intermediaries extending banks’ lending reach to smallholder populations individual lending could not profitably serve.
Default Rates and Repayment Performance
SACCO agricultural lending default rates average 5% annually, comparable to formal financial institutions’ performance and substantially below informal sector lending where default rates exceed 30%. This repayment performance reflects multiple SACCO mechanisms creating accountability: peer pressure within groups where solidarity members guarantee each other’s loans, management capacity monitoring borrower repayment discipline, and direct cash flow linkages where cooperatives verify production achievement before releasing funds.
Regional variation exists: some SACCOs report rates as low as 2.5% while others reach 3-8% depending on agricultural risks, member discipline, SACCO governance quality, and external economic shocks. Agricultural default concentration reflects agronomic risks (weather, pests, diseases) exceeding borrower control, suggesting that insurance mechanisms and government safety nets addressing production shocks would further improve SACCO repayment while protecting member assets.
Development Partner Financing: Blended Finance and Risk Mitigation
International development partners provide complementary financing mechanisms addressing gaps within government programs through grant components, portfolio guarantees, and technical assistance bundling transforming raw capital access into sustainable agricultural enterprise development.
START Facility: European Union and UNCDF Support
The Support to Agricultural Revitalization and Transformation (START) Facility, funded by the European Union and implemented by the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), exemplifies modern blended finance approaches combining grants, concessional loans, and portfolio guarantees. Launched in Phase I (2018-2023) focused on northern Uganda’s 40 districts, START II (2023-2027) has expanded countrywide, targeting agribusiness SMEs and producer cooperatives in value addition and agro-processing.
START’s unique contribution involves bundling financial incentives with technical assistance. Cooperatives and agribusiness enterprises receive: development services for bankable investment proposal creation; financial structuring support translating business concepts into lender-acceptable documentation; portfolio guarantees covering first loss (up to 35% of portfolio risk) for participating lenders; and results-based incentives rewarding institutions successfully closing loans to high-impact enterprises. This infrastructure transformation addresses supply-side constraints: even when farmers and cooperatives seek credit, lack of bankable business plans prevents lender approval. START resolves this through technical assistance generating investment-ready proposals.
The facility targets USD 20 million in commercial finance mobilization across 250+ agribusiness loans, demonstrating that government and development partner incentive structures can crowd in commercial capital if risk mitigation and technical support address institutional lending barriers. Priority sectors emphasize value addition and agro-processing—activities driving cooperative profitability beyond commodity production’s narrow margins, particularly relevant for cooperatives seeking transition from input supply to output marketing.
USAID Strategic Investment Activity
USAID’s Uganda Strategic Investment Activity channels $140 million (UGX 500 billion) over five years, with 75% dedicated to agriculture. Unlike conventional project support emphasizing outputs, SIA focuses on investment-readiness: cooperatives receive training in record-keeping, resource mobilization, financial management, and organizational prioritization enabling them to meet commercial bank lending standards. By addressing information asymmetries and governance weaknesses, SIA transforms cooperatives into lenders’ preferred partners rather than risk-intensive propositions requiring exceptional concessions.
USADF and Common Fund for Commodities Grants
The U.S. African Development Foundation (USADF), working with Stanbic Bank Uganda, provides grants up to USD 40,000 to agricultural SMEs, MSMEs, and producer cooperatives with priority for women and youth-led enterprises. Rather than creating moral hazard through pure grants, USADF combines grants with institutional strengthening—awardees must demonstrate “functional management and financial controls for a minimum of 2 years,” signaling that grants reward demonstrated capacity rather than subsidizing governance deficiency.
The Common Fund for Commodities similarly provides financial and technical support targeting commodity value chains, particularly supporting women-led enterprises and producer organizations, recognizing gender dimensions of agricultural transformation where women’s differential resource access constraints financing capacity despite often constituting majority of producers.
Cooperative Financing from Specialized International Partners
International cooperative partnerships provide affordable capital. Research documented that Rabo Bank (Netherlands) extends financing to Uganda cooperatives at 8% per annum without collateral requirements, considerably below market rates. Shared Finance (UK cooperative union) similarly provides 8% financing through the Cooperative Bank of Kenya to selected East African cooperatives, utilizing tripartite agreements specifying buyer contracts guaranteeing repayment. These international cooperative networks acknowledge that cooperative-to-cooperative financing carries lower risk than commercial lending, justifying enhanced affordability.
The Financing Access Pathway: Practical Steps for Cooperative Participation
Despite multiple financing sources, accessing capital requires navigation across government agencies, cooperatives, and financial institutions. The documented pathway for smallholder farmers includes sequential steps that successful cooperatives and individuals follow.
Cooperative Formation and Registration
Initial prerequisite involves either joining existing registered cooperatives or establishing new cooperative societies complying with Cooperative Societies Act 2020. Once registered, cooperative membership facilitates credit access: farmers demonstrate organization capability, benefit from group dynamics reducing individual credit risk profiles, and gain credibility accessing programs specifically designed for cooperative channels.
Government Program Eligibility Verification
Farmers determine eligibility for specific programs based on location (PDM presence), occupational category (Emyooga), commercialization stage (ACF), or farm size (large-scale farmer schemes). Parish Development Model presence indicates local SACCO availability; Emyooga requires occupational group formation; ACF requires bankable business plans. Clarity regarding which program matches farmer circumstances prevents wasted effort pursuing inappropriate financing.
Documentation Preparation
Successful credit access requires documentation that many subsistence farmers lack. Requirements typically include: national identity documentation; group membership records; farm holdings documentation; land agreements or tenure evidence (where available); and production records demonstrating yields and income. Cooperatives facilitate documentation assembly, leveraging collective records and group verification. This institutional intermediation converts individual documentation gaps into organizational capacity leveraging.
Technical Training and Capacity Building
All major financing programs include capacity building components—PDM mandates training before first disbursements; Emyooga provides MSC training; ACF requires business plan development demonstrating production knowledge; START includes investment proposal development training. These technical components transform raw financing into productive investment, addressing market failure where credit without productive knowledge yields failed enterprises and bad loans.
Loan Application and Approval
Once prepared, farmer cooperatives submit applications through respective program channels. PDM and Emyooga applications flow through SACCO leadership to government; ACF applications reach participating commercial banks; START applications receive UNCDF technical appraisal. Cooperative intermediation accelerates approval: institutions trust cooperatives’ vetting more than individual farmer applications, creating information advantage reducing processing times.
Disbursement and Utilization Monitoring
Approved funds disburse through cooperatives (PDM, Emyooga) or directly to banks (ACF), with ongoing monitoring ensuring funds reach production investments rather than consumption or alternative uses. Government programs and development partners impose utilization tracking, creating accountability extending beyond formal credit contracts.
Challenges and Financing Gaps Limiting Agricultural Transformation
Despite comprehensive financing infrastructure, significant obstacles remain preventing cooperatives from accessing optimal credit levels.
Cooperative Governance Failures and Member Distrust
Governance failures within cooperatives—embezzlement of member savings, misappropriation of loan funds, manipulation of lending decisions favoring leadership relatives—create member distrust limiting participation willingness. Without strong governance, member confidence erodes; new members decline joining; and existing members reduce activity participation. This trust deficit persists particularly in larger cooperatives where personal relationships diminish and accountability mechanisms weaken.
Weak Credit Appraisal Capacity in SACCOs
Many SACCOs, particularly newly formed entities and those in remote areas, lack credit assessment training. Staff cannot analyze borrower creditworthiness, evaluate production feasibility, or structure loans matching repayment capacity to production cycles. This appraisal weakness drives delinquency through poor loan matching: borrowers receive funding for unproductive purposes, overestimate their capacity to repay, or face unexpected shocks making repayment impossible when underwriting lacked risk assessment.
Collateral Perfection and Enforcement Challenges
While cooperatives innovate with group guarantees and warehouse receipts, perfecting these collateral forms in legal frameworks designed for property-based pledges remains challenging. Enforcement when default occurs—foreclosing on warehouse receipts or enforcing group guarantees—requires institutional capacity many cooperatives lack, creating moral hazard where borrowers recognize enforcement risk as minimal.
Agricultural Risk Concentration
Agricultural production depends on weather, pests, diseases, and market prices exceeding borrower control. Loan repayment failures often reflect legitimate production shocks rather than borrower culpability, creating high portfolio risk and lender conservatism. Without appropriate insurance—crop insurance indemnifying against production shocks, price insurance hedging commodity risk—loan portfolios remain vulnerable to systemic agricultural risk.
Sustainability Following External Support Withdrawal
Cooperatives established through government programs or donor projects frequently deteriorate when external support concludes, particularly when cooperatives lack independent income sources or member commitment proves contingent on subsidy. Sustainability requires that cooperatives generate sufficient surplus through service delivery—lending volumes generating interest income, membership fees, and asset appreciation—to sustain operations independently. This requires multi-year maturation exceeding typical project timeframes.
Limited Integration Between Financing and Extension Services
Credit without corresponding technical extension frequently proves counterproductive: farmers obtain loans but lack knowledge implementing improved practices generating returns justifying repayment. Optimal agricultural financing integrates credit with extension training, input supply, and market linkages creating production ecosystem enabling repayment. Fragmented financing without extension integration represents incomplete intervention.
Geographic and Temporal Credit Synchronization
Credit availability timing mismatches agricultural needs. Farmers require financing before planting season; cooperatives build capital through post-harvest savings. Addressing this seasonal credit need requires warehouse receipt financing or cross-subsidization where off-season commercial credit funds seasonal agricultural demands. Not all cooperatives possess sophistication enabling such temporal arbitrage.
Conclusion: Cooperative-Centered Financing as Agricultural Transformation Engine
Cooperatives have become indispensable institutions through which Uganda’s majority smallholder farmers access affordable agricultural financing that commercial markets fundamentally cannot provide at viable interest rates. The financing architecture combining government programs (PDM, ACF, Emyooga, large-scale schemes), cooperative self-financing through SACCOs, and development partner support creates tiered access enabling farmers across commercialization stages to obtain appropriate financing.
The interest rate spectrum—from PDM’s 5-6% to commercial banks’ 15-17%—demonstrates that cooperative and government-supported financing delivers 60-70% cost reductions transforming farm economics. For smallholder farmers earning UGX 3-10 million annually, annual interest savings of hundreds of thousands of shillings (weeks of household consumption) significantly impact food security and productive investment capacity. The documented household income improvements following cooperative credit access—increased meal frequency, improved housing, educational investment, asset accumulation—confirm financing impact transcends accounting categories to materially improve rural welfare.
The innovation in collateral structures—group guarantees, warehouse receipts, tripartite arrangements linking production to financing—solves market failures preventing land title scarcity from excluding otherwise capable farmers from credit. This institutional innovation enables financial access where property-based systems fail.
Yet realizing full potential requires addressing governance challenges, extending technical capacity, improving credit appraisal, and integrating financing with extension services. Cooperatives are not panaceas; poor governance and weak management can render cooperative financing counterproductive. Government commitment to regulatory oversight, technical support, and cooperative quality assurance remains essential.
With sustained policy support, continued development partner investment in capacity building, and cooperative leadership commitment to member-centric governance, Uganda’s cooperative-centered agricultural financing can facilitate farmer transition from subsistence to commercial production, simultaneously achieving food security and rural income growth imperative for poverty reduction and national development. The scale of government investment—now exceeding UGX 865 billion cumulatively—signals institutional commitment to this vision, though implementation quality and sustainability remain frontline challenges.