The lack of adaptation to climate change and unsustainable land management mean that Uganda is ranked as the world’s 12th most climate vulnerable country. Based on current technologies and business models, Uganda’s natural capital base will continue to depreciate, permanently hindering its long-term development prospects. As such, there is a need for innovation and technology-based solutions to drive transformative changes to increase sustainability and climate resilience of the Ugandan agriculture sector.
The private sector, on its own, will not address or provide the answers Uganda needs to promote climate resilience, mitigation, and sustainable land management. In part, this is due to the high costs of capital, high risks of early-stage innovation, and the significant organisational hurdles to creating a coalition of stakeholders capable of testing the workability of novel means to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change. With funds from the UK Government, the UCIF will support innovators and entrepreneurs to pilot, incubate and accelerate new climate smart products and services. It aims to drive innovation in Uganda’s efforts to adapt to and mitigate climate change and promote sustainable land management in the agriculture sector.
The UCIF will run three funding windows from 2023 through to 2025, supporting innovations for genuinely new ideas to tackle challenges in agriculture. As examples, this innovation could be in the form of developing a good or service that is new or significantly improved, an improved production or delivery method, a new marketing method, or a new organisational method in business practices. The UCIF targets potential pioneers (i.e., enterprises, organisations, and individuals) that have pre-proof-of-concept innovation(s) that offer potential for long-term transformational change in Uganda’s ability to adapt to and mitigate climate change and promote sustainable land management practices. The pioneer may propose to be supported themselves to undertake the proof of concept, or they may wish to test the idea/innovation through collaboration with CSJ lead implementer, Palladium, or its partners, Swisscontact, Stanbic or CABI, and an additional implementing partner.