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    Fund tar­gets cli­mate mit­ig­a­tion in­nov­at­ors

    Fund-targets-climate-mitigation-innovators-in-UgandaIn a bid to curb the vagar­ies of weather in East Africa Re­si­li­ent Africa Net­work has launched an in­nov­a­tion grant chal­lenge tar­get­ing schol­ars and re­search­ers to de­velop mod­els and in­nov­a­tions geared to­wards fight­ing food in­sec­ur­ity through cli­mate re­si­li­ent ap­proaches.

    Re­si­li­ent Africa Net­work (RAN) is one of the eight uni­versity-based De­vel­op­ment Labs mak­ing up the Higher Edu­ca­tion Solu­tions Net­work (HESN) es­tab­lished by the United States Agency for In­ter­na­tional De­vel­op­ment (USAID) and ex­ist­ing within its Global De­vel­op­ment. RAN’s grant chal­lenge ap­proach is based on the fact that the solu­tions to the cur­rent chal­lenges can be tapped from the local people.

    “We be­lieve that the re­si­li­ence of people and sys­tems in Africa will be strengthened by lever­aging the know­ledge, schol­ar­ship and cre­ativ­ity that ex­ists across the Re­si­li­ent Africa Net­work to in­cub­ate, test, and scale in­nov­a­tions that tar­get cap­ab­il­it­ies and re­duce vul­ner­ab­il­it­ies iden­ti­fied by a sci­entific, data-driven, and evid­enced-based re­si­li­ence frame­work for sub-Saha­ran Africa,” noted RAN’s dir­ector of in­nov­a­tions Dr. Wanjiku Nganga.

    Sim­ilar sen­ti­ments were echoed by Maker­ere Uni­versity vice chan­cel­lor Pro­fessor Mondo Kagonyera who chal­lenged re­search­ers dur­ing the grant chal­lenge launch to cap­it­al­ize on it and offer sus­tain­able solu­tions to most farm­ers who are suf­fer­ing. “Let us not wait for other people or bod­ies to de­velop solu­tions to our chal­lenges. We know and live with these chal­lenges; con­sequently, we can de­velop best solu­tions to ad­dress them.

    Upon reas­on­able de­vel­op­ment and test­ing, the in­nov­a­tions in­cub­ated by RAN shall be trans­lated into ‘re­si­li­ence in­ter­ven­tions’ and scaled in rep­res­ent­at­ive tar­get pop­u­la­tions. RAN’s as­sump­tion is that the ef­fects ob­served in the test pop­u­la­tions can be rep­lic­ated else­where.

    The Round 1 Re­si­li­ence In­nov­a­tion Chal­lenge is being hos­ted by the East­ern Africa RILab that is based at Maker­ere Uni­versity School of Pub­lic Health, Uganda. Part­ner uni­versit­ies con­sti­tut­ing the EA RILab in­clude Maker­ere and Gulu Uni­versit­ies (Uganda), Na­tional Uni­versity of Rwanda (Rwanda), the Uni­versity of Kin­shasa (DRC), and Muhim­bili Uni­versity of Health and Al­lied Sci­ences (Tan­zania).

    Ac­cord­ing to Dr. Wanjiku, within the coun­tries host­ing these in­sti­tu­tions, RAN has iden­ti­fied seven com­munit­ies where its core re­si­li­ence chal­lenges are highly pre­val­ent, to fa­cil­it­ate the re­si­li­ence build­ing pro­cess. The seven com­munit­ies in­clude four com­munit­ies in Uganda, two from Rwanda and one com­munity from the DRC. She ob­served that the East­ern Africa re­gion faces re­cur­rent shocks and stresses arising from cli­mate vari­ab­il­ity. Events are char­ac­ter­ized by heavy de­struct­ive rains in some re­gions and in­suf­fi­cient rain in oth­ers, while some re­gions os­cil­late between both.

    As a res­ult of the poor cli­matic trend, the East­ern Africa RILab has con­duc­ted fur­ther ex­plor­a­tion of these phe­nom­ena in four com­munit­ies: Mt.​Elgon, Al­b­ertine and Teso sub-re­gions in Uganda, and North­ern and West­ern Rwanda. “Cur­rent evid­ence shows that av­er­age rain­fall is in­creas­ing in the wet­ter re­gions and re­du­cing in the drier ones with the im­me­di­ate haz­ards arising out of these cli­mate events in­clud­ing rapid and slow-on­set floods in the low lying plains, land­slides and in the event that either the rains or the droughts ex­tend by a month bey­ond their an­ti­cip­ated dur­a­tion, house­holds may lose an en­tire crop,” ex­plained Dr. Wanjiku.

    In ad­di­tion, the onset of rains has also be­come more er­ratic. “Among rural farm­ers, the nar­row range of crops they grow is used for both house­hold con­sump­tion and in­come gen­er­a­tion, which com­bined with in­ex­ist­ent crop in­sur­ance, low fin­an­cial in­clu­sion, and low value ad­di­tion to pro­duce severe con­strains in their live­li­hood safety nets, trap­ping them into a vi­cious cycle of low in­comes and per­en­nial poverty,”

    These calam­it­ies em­an­at­ing from cli­mate change mainly af­fect the poor rural farm­ers hence the in­tens­i­fic­a­tion of the search for per­man­ent solu­tions one of which is the RAN chal­lenge grant.  Dr. Wanjiku Nnganga high­lighted that this call fo­cuses on the sourcing, de­vel­op­ing, and scal­ing of trans­form­at­ive tech­no­lo­gies and ap­proaches that will strengthen re­si­li­ence to shocks and stresses that arise from cli­mate vari­ab­il­ity and cli­mate change. “In par­tic­u­lar, RAN is look­ing to cata­lyze and in­centiv­ize the de­vel­op­ment of solu­tions that will im­pact ag­ri­cul­tural pro­duc­tion and mar­kets, as well as live­li­hood di­ver­si­fic­a­tion and fin­an­cial in­clu­sion.

    Grants ran­ging between US$15,000 to US$45,000 are an­ti­cip­ated under Phase 1 of this call.” Win­ners of Phase 1 Grants will then qual­ify to com­pete for Phase 2 grants which are an­ti­cip­ated to range between US$50,000 to US$100,000, while win­ners of Phase 2 grants may sub­sequently com­plete for Phase 3 awards which are an­ti­cip­ated to range between US$100,000 and US$ 200,000. The grants will sup­port de­vel­op­ment of in­nov­at­ive ap­proaches and tech­no­lo­gies that will strengthen re­si­li­ence to ad­verse cli­mate ef­fects arising from cli­mate vari­ab­il­ity and cli­mate change within the East­ern Africa re­gion.

    The grant chal­lenge seeks to identify and fund about eight pro­ject teams ad­dress­ing two of the cat­egor­ies of the chal­lenge. The first cat­egory seeks solu­tions that can ‘shake-up’ the status quo on ag­ri­cul­tural prac­tices re­lated to pro­duc­tion and mar­ket in­ter­ac­tion in a trans­form­at­ive way that mul­ti­plies yield and cre­ates more farmer lever­age in the mar­kets.

    The second cat­egory of the grant chal­lenge seeks solu­tions that will sub­stan­tially em­power tar­get com­munit­ies by di­ver­si­fy­ing their live­li­hoods using simple but highly prof­it­able farm and non-farm busi­nesses, and solu­tions that cre­ate bet­ter fin­an­cial in­clu­sion for rural house­holds through sav­ings and ac­cess to credit
    Teams will be se­lec­ted based on the qual­ity of their ap­plic­a­tions which will be eval­u­ated to as­cer­tain re­si­li­ence build­ing po­ten­tial, po­ten­tial for trans­form­at­ive im­pact, scalab­il­ity, feas­ib­il­ity, and vi­ab­il­ity.

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