Demonstration case: Uganda

The Measures Against Climate Change in Agriculture (MACCA) has been developed to utilize CLIMTAG, a web-based dashboard offering tailored climate information for the past and future, to support smallholder farmers in adapting to the weather variability and changing climate conditions in Uganda. The aim of the project is to impact at least 500 female smallholder maize farmers in the Busoga subregion of Uganda by providing them with training in agroecology, providing them with affordable credit to expand climate-resilient farming activities and direct sales opportunities to ensure that they reap reasonable household incomes that will ensure their standard of living improves. The Busoga subregion has been selected as it is the region of focus as it has been ranked the poorest region for the past decade in Uganda.

The project will be implemented by a consortium of partners, with Ondernemers voor Ondernemers (OVO) and Einstein Rising as the lead and with three strong implementation partners to handle the different elements of the initiative, including:

• Amelia Agro Africa Limited, who will act as a real agro lab, providing a toolkit for the smallholder farmers to help them to grow their productivity in a climate-resilient way. It has everything to become a real demo farm with a big impact on the wider region. The selection of agricultural practices to be promoted will be guided by output from the CLIMTAG tool for the region, which will inform on how agro-climate indicators like onset of the rainy season and occurrence of dry spells will change in the future and hence which practices remain sustainable.
• Akaboxi Limited is a microfinance that enables communities of smallholder farmers to have access to funds and to markets for their produce. The Akaboxi system replaces the unsafe process of keeping money in boxes in homes with a more secure, reliable, and easy-to-monitor savings and transactions program that connects to financial services.
• Rena Beverage Solutions Limited is a private company that produces purely organic products such as hibiscus tea, juices and wines. Its products are popular among Ugandans who care about healthy food and parents who are aware of their children's health.

By scaling up existing operations of the entrepreneurs that are part of the consortium, the project aims at having a sustainable impact on the region beyond the 24-month project runtime of KLIMPALA. In addition, the project will strongly engage with national and regional government institutions to promote the use of CLIMTAG by decision-makers in agricultural support offices, extension workers and other stakeholders in the agricultural sector to support adaptation planning.

The combination of agroecology training, affordable finance and access to market intervention provides solutions to three of the challenges along the agricultural value chain, resulting in increased productivity and household incomes, thus contributing to lifting the region out of dire poverty.

Keywords: smallholder farmers, agriculture value chain, agroecology