Agroecology and Alternative Food Systems in Kenya and Uganda

Along with the Agenda 2030 and SDGs, the project’s purpose is in line with the aims of the Paris Climate Agreement, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. Agroecology has been spearheaded by the FAO in recent years and is receiving more interest worldwide from different institutions as an effective answer to climate change and the interrelated challenges facing food systems. Over the years, policies in East African countries have focused mostly on crop agriculture and intensive livestock breeding systems, neglecting the importance of indigenous crops, wild food plants and livestock breeds; rural communities have benefited little from the strong focus on agricultural growth. In Kenya the sustainable use of land and the boosting of household food resilience were recently defined as priorities in the Agricultural Sector Transformation and Growth Strategy 2019-2029. In Uganda, in 2019, a process for the development of a national strategy for scaling up of agroecology was started.

Main Goals
The proposed project intends to improve the livelihoods of local farming communities in Kenya and Uganda by further promoting the transition towards agroecological food systems. The project will focus on:
- investing in partnerships within agroecology networks by developing linkages and synergies with other projects and organizations (exploratory project phase)
- strengthening the Slow Food on-going projects (food gardens, Presidia, Earth Markets) for their use as successful show cases for agroecological approaches
- sensitizing consumers on the benefits of agroecological products
- strengthening presence in local policy platforms that affect agroecology
The project will be greatly looking at improving agroecology by building alliances and sharing grassroots evidence base in Uganda and Kenya targeting the local, national and global agroecological partners.
The Partnership

The project invested in partnerships with agroecological networks by developing links and synergies with other projects and organizations, strengthen Slow Food projects such as food gardens, Presidia and Earth Markets as successful cases of agroecological approaches, increase the Slow Food presence in local policy platforms which work on agroecology, and finally raise awareness among consumers of the benefits of agroecological products.

Slow Food Kenya and Slow Food Uganda hold a set of promising approaches for strengthening the recognition of agroecology with a strong focus on networking, capacity building among farmers, the scaling-up of grassroots initiatives, promoting the benefits of eating agroecological food and advocating for agroecology with local governments and institutions.