BACKGROUND OF UGANDA CLIMATE SMART TRANSFORMATION PROJECT
The Uganda Climate Smart Agricultural transformation Project (UCSATP) is a six (6) years World Bank project operating in 69 District. Kikuube district being a refugee host, its benefiting from the loan (for the host community) and the grant (for the refugees).
In Kikuube, the project was launched on 16th-17th December, 2024 and different stakeholders were involved at district and lower local government level.
The project development objective is to increase productivity, market access and resilience of select value chains in the project area and to respond promptly and effectively to an eligible crisis or emergency. The value chains supported in Kikuube include Coffee, Dairy, Beef, Aquaculture, Capture fisheries, Black Soldier flies (BSFs) and Apiculture.
1.2 The project components:
1.2.1: Strengthening Climate-Smart Agricultural Research, Seed, and Agro-Climatic Information Systems
This component will support the development, validation, packaging, and dissemination of context specific CSA Technologies, Innovations & Management Practices (TIMPs) to target beneficiaries through: Competitive research grants, Sponsoring MSc and PhD students and Strengthening Agro-Climate Monitoring and Information Systems
1.2.2: Promoting Adoption of Climate Smart Agriculture Technologies and Practices
The component will support investments for up-scaling and adoption of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) technologies, innovations, and management practices (TIMPs) developed in Component one through: Productivity enhancement and resilience for food and nutrition security in refugee settlements, Productivity Enhancement and Resilience Investments for income generation [(Matching grants, Sustainable Land Management (SLM) – Labour Intensive Public Works (LIPW)], Building institutional capacity for productivity enhancement, resilience, and strengthening service delivery
1.2.3: Market Development and Linkages for Selected Value Chains
It aims at improving access to remunerative markets through increased access to harvesting, post-harvest handling, storage, value addition, and market linkage services, equipment, and infrastructure by Producer Associations and Producer Organizations (POs)
- Investments in Market development for selected value chains for refugees and host communities
1.2.4: Contingency Emergency Response
This zero-cost component will finance eligible expenditures under the Immediate Response Mechanism (IRM) in case of natural or man-made crises or disasters such as severe droughts, floods, specific pest and disease outbreaks and severe economic shocks in Uganda. Funds will be triggered through formal notification of an emergency by the relevant government authority and upon a formal request from the Government to the World Bank through the MoFPED
- The emergency response would include: Mitigation, Recovery, and Reconstruction.
1.2.5: Project Coordination, Management, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning
This component will support the Coordination, management, monitoring, and evaluation and learning of the project, Strengthening the Environment, Social, Safety and Health (ESSH) Risk Management system
The financing mechanism
- Direct Financing shall include National-level investments
- Grants shall include (Competitive Research Grants (CRG), District-level Grants, matching grants for production, Matching grants for post-harvest handling and marketing, Nutrition grants, SLM-LIPW payments).
Project implementation in the refugee settlements
The Government of Uganda is currently hosting over 1.7m Refugees. In Kikuube they are over 151,806 and each day more refugees are received following the unrest in DRC and South Sudan. These refugees exert pressure on the existing services shared with host communities impacting on service delivery. Refugees are faced with critical challenges of; food shortages, limited access to land, high malnutrition rates, dependency on food aid, reduced funding to refugee settlements.
The UCSATP therefore supports refugees in the settlements to access seed and land to enhance agricultural productivity and promote food and nutrition security, empower Refugees to have access to quality seed, land, knowledge and skills necessary to attain self-reliance through the following:
- Empower refugees to establish block farms
- Provision of mechanization equipment i.e tractors and irrigation.
- Provision of food and nutrition production inputs.
- Provision of harvest, post-harvest, value addition and storage equipment &facilities.
- Provision of micro-irrigation kits.
- Skills development of selected youth on off- farm in the value chain nodes
In the refugee camp, the project will support 350 groups, targeting over 10500 households. The following value chains are being promoted: Food security (Maize and Cassava), Nutrition (Beans and Vegetables), Livestock (Piggery and Poultry) and Black Soldier flies (BSFs). Category of vegetables include: Cabbage, Tomatoes, Cassava leaves and Onions.