These combine policy & operational aspects crucial to drive climate actions from an opportunities perspective- where the result is expanding economies, ensuring food security & creating multiple income opportunities – which remain the leading priorities of countries. And by this, catalyze a demand driven, country led transition to the low emissions development pathway. In line with section 5 of the Paris Agreement, EBAFOSA Uganda has built extraordinary partnerships at both policy and operational level as exemplified in progress under each of these pillars. This is against a backdrop of the urgent need to accelerate implementation of Uganda’s economic blue-print – the vision 2040 – while meeting the country’s objectives under the Paris Climate Change Agreement as enshrined in its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

The assessment demonstrated 3 critical aspects in actioning the pillars towards actualizing accelerated implementation;

First, convening complementary strengths across different sectors around the strategic thrust of climate proofing & maximizing productivity of Agriculture. A highly catalytic sector capable of accelerating actualization of shared priorities of the vision 2040 & NDCs;

Second, the efficacy of building on on-going work in each of these complementary sectors to minimize duplication which is the biggest operational risk.

Third, leveraging on human capital – the professional skills & networks represented in each of the complementary sectors to bridge gaps in the above – rather that upfront financing.

Key achievements

EBA/clean energy amalgamation pillar: under this pillar, working through the Ministry of Land, Environment and Agriculture in the Buganda Kingdom which has secured cassava supply contracts for its farmers with the Uganda Breweries worth $5 million, EBAFOSA Uganda is convening necessary partnerships to ensure this supply chain is stabilized. Cassava is a critical raw material used in beer production. EBAFOSA is responding to the raw material shortages the brewery faces.  Accordingly, through EBAFOSA Uganda, EBA approaches known to be climate resilient are being adopted as the preferred method to produce the cassava and ensure yields can be enhanced under the changing climate. In addition, clean energy actors have been mobilized to partner with the farmers & supply various clean energy interventions critical to maximizing productivity. Among critical systems are solar powered micro-irrigation to enhance yields & solar driers to preserve surplus and buffer the supply chain. Accordingly, a total of 10 acres under cassava have been developed in Ssentema, Busiro county. These will provide cuttings to replicate across all the 19 counties of the Kingdom. This collaboration is ensuring EBA critical to meeting Uganda’s adaptation NDCs & clean energy critical to meting Uganda’s mitigation NDCs can be upscaled in an economic & market driven programme meant to create socioeconomic opportunities in the Kingdom. The Prime Minister of the Buganda Kingdom acknowledged the cassava multiplication pilot as a critical model of how acceleration of the Buganda Kingdom and the entire Uganda socioeconomic aims will be practically achieved.

Market-Driven Incentives Pillar: the Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) has agreed to work with UN Environment through EBAFOSA to create market incentives critical to fuel the rise of sustainable agriculture led, clean energy powered industrialization enterprise in Uganda. This as a strategic thrust to accelerate realization of the Uganda Vision 2040 & NDCs thus catalyze demand driven transition to the low emissions development pathway. This will be actualized not necessarily by formulating new standards. But rather implementing already existing standards in an interconnected-cascade called EBAFOSA compliance market-driven incentives tool. Where standards covering clean energy, organics, ICT, quality, safety & health among key areas that are currently enforced by UNBS as stand-alone within sectorial silos, will be enforced in an interconnected-cascade. This towards a common end to benchmark products, processes & services critical to establish the sustainable agriculture led, clean energy powered industrialization enterprises.

Policy Coherence and Synchronization Pillar: the overarching goal is to bridge policy silos for policy coherence towards creating market enablers for implementation of Uganda’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in the context of actualizing its long-term development blue-print - the vision 2040. Both being shared government-wide priorities. The motivation of the task-force is enhancing the cumulative throughput of sectorial policies towards the above shared priorities by enhancing inter-ministerial policy coherence & synergy towards setting an enabling economy wide policy environment that attracts investments towards a catalytic drive area. Which is establishment of Ecosystems Based Adaptation (EBA)-Driven Agriculture led, clean energy powered industrialization with ICT enabled linkages to market and supply chains as the strategic thrust engine of maximizing both climate & socioeconomic benefits for Uganda. By this, incentivize Uganda’s transition to Low Emissions Development. The approach used;

a)    Builds on existing, planned, ongoing policies & processes within each of the respective complementary ministries rather than starting from scratch. This to lower operational risks and enhance efficiency;

b)    Ensures the realignments in implementing respective ministry policies to create synergy in the above, also drives actualization of each ministries sectorial priorities. This ensures buy-in of the taskforce by all relevant sectorial policy players.  

The Uganda National Planning Authority (NPA) responsible for coordinating development across government has agreed to host the Uganda EBAFOSA Interagency Policy Taskforce which will be responsible for actualizing policy implementation coherence towards low emissions development. As development of the National Development Plan III is underway, with a focus on implementation to drive the vision 2040, this taskforce is set to be a timely instrument for the NPA to leverage and mobilize policy implementation efforts across government ministries & state agencies to coherently align with maximizing agro-productivity through sustainable, clean energy powered agro-industrialization enterprise. This as the strategic approach to accelerate realization of the vision 2040 & Uganda NDCs to which the work of all ministries aligns to actualize.

Next steps:

EBA/clean energy amalgamation: EBAFOSA Uganda to work with the Buganda Kingdom towards mobilizing additional partnerships that will replicate the 10acres in Busiro across the 18 counties of the Kingdom as strategic thrust for realizing both the socioeconomic & climate resilience aims of the Kingdom.

Market driven incentives pillar: Domestication of the EBAFOSA compliance market-driven incentives tool for enforcement of the UNBS. The UNBS to form an expert group that will lead official adoption of the EBAFOSA compliance market-driven incentives tool for official enforcement by UNBS. UN Environment to provide technical backstopping and strategic guidance. 

Policy Coherence Pillar: the National Planning Authority (NPA) with technical backstopping and strategic guidance from UN Environment to host the Uganda EBAFOSA Interagency policy taskforce towards convening complementarities across ministers for governmentwide synergy in sectorial policy implementation for coherence towards realizing shared priorities – the vision 2040 & NDCs.

The Uganda EBAFOSA Inter Agency Policy Task Force to be the key instrument by which the NPA will actualize implementation of the 3^rd National Development Plan to implement the vision 2040. The approach will be creating government wide policy implementation synergy, towards sustainably industrialising Uganda’s agro-value chains as the strategic thrust engine. This to be realized by combining clean energy development with sustainable agriculture developments as the core of sustainable industry with key enablers in market standards & financing. To this end, the following are the key policy areas whose implementation will be synchronized;

1) Leveraging on implementation of the National Cooperatives Policy, the Feed-in Tariff policies and various fiscal incentives under the Ministry of Finance - including tax exemption on income earned by financial institutions lending to agriculture; income tax exemptions for new rural agro-processing investments; and zero rating for VAT on most agricultural inputs and services – for a targeted end – to incentivize cooperatives to prioritize financing clean energy investments specifically for agro-value addition. This as a strategic thrust to accelerate actualizing the Uganda Vision 2040 and NDCs;

2) Maximizing implementation of Uganda’s climate smart agriculture policy & the feed-in tariffs by combining implementation of their programmes with the objective to decentralize clean energy to power value addition in climate smart farms as a strategic thrust to drive NDCs & vision 2040 implementation.

3) Maximizing the Uganda’s Feed-in Tariff policy to drive NDCs & vison 2040 by ensuring incentives to scale decentralized clean energy are tied to powering agro-value addition as above.

4) Task force to analyse additional policies in each of the line ministries for additional policy elements that are complementary & synergistic to contribute to drive productivity maximization of the engine of development (agriculture) through sustainably industrializing it as discussed above.

Congratulations to EBAFOSA Uganda for taking its collaboration with UN Environment EBAFOSA further to accelerate climate resilient socioeconomic transformation to the collective benefit of people & planet

For further information please contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.