Building a Green Agri-Food Ecosystem in Uganda

Project Summary:

The project is structured into three main components with activities grouped around climate adaptation, building resilience, and mitigation in the agri-food system by leveraging digital technologies with the fourth component focused on dissemination. The project aims to co-create a green climate-smart agri-food system in Uganda by building capacity within the Ugandan ag-tech ecosystem and fostering innovation partnerships with Korean technology partners. The team aims to attain the objective by leveraging digital technologies to deploy climate-smart agriculture (CSA) production and processing technologies, innovations, and management practices in Uganda’s agri-food system. The project will contribute to Uganda’s key priority to develop climate adaptation and mitigation strategies for agriculture as well as promote digital agricultural technologies in the context of Covid-19.

List of Activities:

• Scaling up climate adaptation with climate-smart e-vouchers
• Building resilience through Digital Platforms
• Building Green Agri-Tech Ecosystem that includes organizing a Green Innovation
• Challenge Day and post-challenge ecosystem building activities for mitigation
• Dissemination of the materials

Outcomes:

Output 1

• Identification and feasibility assessment of on-farm CSA technologies through e-voucher completed by creating (i) CSA Profiles of 2 ACDP districts (ii) feasibility study of CSA e-vouchers in 2 districts
• Bringing Korean expertise and CSA best practices to Uganda for technical exchange by (i) 50 Government officials trained (ii) 10 Korean counterparts involved (iii) 1 Knowledge Exchange workshop organized

Output 2

• Digital climate-smart agriculture solution piloted with learnings for further scale-up
• At least 50 youth involved (with 50% women participation)

Output 3

• Finalizing and recruiting 5 green agri-tech startups/green post-harvest technologies to work with the CSAAD project
• Participation of at least 20 agri-tech startups/ green post-harvest technologies for the Green Innovation Challenge Day for a competitive selection
• Green Innovation Day organized in the presence of 100 stakeholders

Outcomes

The outcomes of this grant will be geared towards building public and private sector capacity in Uganda and co-creating a green climate-smart agri-food system to be achieved by identification of on-farm climate-smart agriculture (CSA) technologies and feasibility assessment of their deployment through digital technologies (e-voucher system); field testing of an agricultural resilience and monitoring system; development of a green agri-tech ecosystem with innovations and green post-harvest technologies.

Collaboration with K-Partners and Others:

• Korea Program on International Agriculture (KOPIA) to identify and bring Korean expertise for complementary training and support in CSA practices.
• Korea Telecom (KT) will bring in technical expertise and core technologies in the form of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data to co-develop a digital climate-smart agriculture solution.
• The team will also invite Korea green agri-tech stakeholders to Innovation Challenge Day in Uganda to induce the cross-fertilization among Korean digital agricultural technology entrepreneurs and African entrepreneurs, transferring technology, matching business opportunities, and attracting private sector investment to promote green and innovative approaches to expand business opportunities in two regions.