Green Challenge Fund: aBi unveils Shs 7.5bn

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Agriculture Business Initiative (aBi) has rolled-out a Green Challenge Fund to support SMEs and farmers to increase their resilience to climate change including soils, ecosystems and bio-diversity.

The Fund seeks to contribute to achieve the global target of limiting global temperature rise to well below 2°C, and potentially even to 1.5°C by 2050.

The Fund is open to all actors that make contributions to aBi-supported priority value chains and have innovative and green ideas, private sector agribusinesses, NGOs, scientists, researchers, and start-ups, running for 12 – 18 months depending on the nature of the project.

The aBi Chief Executive Officer, Mona Muguma-Ssebuliba, said the Fund will help address green challenges in agriculture and promote a green agri-food system.

“…we kick-off this Fund with Shs 7.5billion as a pilot but our vision is to scale it up to Shs 20 billion by 2023, to further impact more SMEs and smallholder farmers and the supported agricultural value chains,” she said.

She said Uganda’s agriculture is evidently experiencing a rapid decline in productivity mainly because of the effects of climate change and that vulnerability will worsen if the country continues with its high levels of unsustainable natural resource utilization.

Felix Okoboi, the chair of the aBi Board said the initiative is timely and management will extend support in implementation to achieve set objectives.

“The challenge to reduce the impact of climate change as we seek to positively impact our communities through agriculture starts with us and is now in high gear,” he said.

Okoboi said, that the Board is excited about the new Fund because it is in line with aBi’s commitment to sustainability and the global Environment Social and Governance (ESG) agenda towards overcoming climate change and its effects on the environment.