Karamoja gets Shs20 billion EU project to enhance food security

The Permanent Secretary Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF) Maj. Gen. David Kasura has said the European Union funded improving food security and resilience of food production systems project is set to enhance resilience and support sustainable food and nutrition security solutions in the Karamoja region.
“The project strategy is designed to achieve four outcomes of building more inclusive and economically sustainable food systems, protect enhanced environmental sustainable food systems, stabilise enhanced food sustainability of food systems and enable governments lead and proactively respond to food crisis. It will be implemented in selected parishes from various sub-counties across all nine districts of Karamoja sub-region targeting at least 16,000 households as direct beneficiaries and 80,000 people as indirect beneficiaries,” he said.
Mr Kasura’s remarks were made by the MAAIF undersecretary, Mr Ronald Ssegawa who delivered his speech during the launch of the project on October 30 at the ministry headquarters in Entebbe.
“The action is funded by the European Union for a total budget of € 5 million (about Shs20 billion) focusing on addressing some of the barriers to improving food security and resilience of food production systems in Karamoja which is to be implemented over a period of three years, from September 2023 to August 2026,” he said.
Mr Kasura said there is need to fast track the implementation of the project since a significant amount of time has been lost from the planned start period of 2023.
The head of Cooperation at the European Union (EU) to Uganda Ms Karolina Hedstrom said the project aligns with the EU’s need to address the challenges of climate change and promoting sustainable development.
“This programme builds on previous efforts and in particular on the EU-funded PROACT project, Pro-Resilience Action for Prevention and Response to Food Crisis, which was designed to increase resilience to food shocks, the resilience to food shocks is even more urgent now because of the impact of climate change” she said,
The assistant Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) representative in charge of programmes in Uganda Dr Charles Owach said the project’s primary goal is to improve food and nutrition security across Karamoja sub-region by enhancing sustainable food production and productivity.
“This will be achieved through strengthening agri-food value chains, empowering smallholder farmers, women and youth to build resilience agri-businesses and reinforcing early warning systems and anticipatory actions” he said.
Mr Owach said the project builds upon both agencies' expertise, mandates and ongoing efforts in the Karamoja sub-region, including the strengthening stock responsive systems in Karamoja initiative.
The Deputy Country Director World Food Programme (WFP), Mr Marcus Prior said the project is part of it’s efforts in the fight against hunger across the country in partnership with the government.
“We also need to help communities at risk to be more resilient to climate shocks, we need to address the root causes of hunger through multi-year projects that shield communities from the impact of the climate crisis. In Karamoja, WFP is working with the government of Uganda and partners including FAO to implement long-term solutions to reducing hunger by ensuring increased food production, livelihood diversification, resilience and climate adaptation programmes” he said.
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