Uganda is set to receive $1.2million from a $3.49million grant to fund its climate change projects.
The climate-smart farming project will promote conservation farming, which has the potential to increase output and earnings.
Uganda is one of five countries (Zimbabwe, Madagascar, eSwatini, Seychelles, Uganda) that will benefit from the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) and United Nations Development programme (UNDP) funding, for a three-year project.
The European Union will provide the bulk of the $1.2million fund to implement the project in seven districts in eastern Uganda while the UNDP will provide $85,368.20. It will be managed by the UNDP under an agreement signed with Comesa in July 2018, while Uganda’s Ministry of Agriculture will contribute advisory and extension services to farmers.
The first phase of the climate-smart farming project was piloted among 15,000 smallholder farmers and schools in Busoga sub-region, eastern Uganda from 2014 to 2016, with a $740,000 grant from Norway and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development.
The new project, titled “Enhancing resilience of agriculture landscape and value chains in eastern Uganda-scaling up Climate-Smart Agriculture practices” will support the adoption of climate smart agriculture practices and technologies among farmer co-operatives and schools.
It is expected to develop enterprise platforms to enhance productivity, value addition, marketing and integration of climate smart farming principles in the target districts from 2019 to 2021.