This project focuses on improving climate smart agriculture mechanisms and land management practices to cope with climatic variability – and declining soil fertility that have led to reduced food production.

As a rural university, when equipped with necessary laboratory equipment, the resultant local research capacity will facilitate and contribute to the alleviation of this crisis of poor agro-ecological systems and risky crop productivity.

A citizen science approach blended with ICT will be used to map climatic related vulnerabilities, agricultural inputs and outputs, and challenges of crop production. The farmers involved in data collection will become the change agents for the easy and faster uptake of research outputs. Agro-meteorological data from installed weather stations will be used to develop climatic e-kiosks for easily accessible data.

The sub-project will significantly increase the research capacity at MUST through scientific training, strengthening lab facilities, tailored MSc, PhD, and short courses’ training in natural resources’ ecology and management, GIS & Remote sensing use, hazard and risk assessment, and soil characterization.

A strong collaboration between sub-project partners at MUST and in Flemish Institutions through staff visits and student exchange will build capacity in conducting research, providing policy advises, and PhD research supervision.

MUST will have improved research expertise and facilities to develop and test climate-smart and sustainable land management practices, while the established citizen-based digital information system will support a multi-actor platform in designing climate smart agriculture interventions and conservation practices for increased and sustainable food production of small holder households of the SW region of Uganda.

This subproject will thus address Uganda NDP III objectives 1, 2 and 4, feeds into SDG 2, 6 and 13.