About The Project:

The EWB-RPI Chapter adopted this project partnership with Uganda in Spring 2023. The Uganda Project Team is partnering with Buyanga Primary School, located in the Eastern Uganda District of Bugweri, to design and implement a new irrigation system for the school’s farmland. This project is currently in the assessment phase, with an upcoming assessment trip planned for December 2023 to meet with the community and collect data needed for solution planning and implementation.

Project Details:

Buyanga Primary School is a church-founded and government-owned school that occupies 10 acres of land, with 7 acres devoted to farmland for serving its community. The school serves 10 villages and engages its students in agriculture and livestock activities. Food crops are grown on the farmland to provide two nutritious meals a day for students, and cash crops are grown to bring in revenue for the school’s financial needs. Crops grown include maize, cassava, sweet potatoes, beans, cabbage, tomatoes, eggplants, onions, collard greens, groundnuts, and soya beans. With a mission to promote healthy, balanced eating, the school works to support families that cannot afford to feed their children three times a day. However, Buyanga Primary School not only struggles with a limited budget, where nutritional efforts are not supported but also with food security due to long droughts–prolonged by climate change–that cause the crops to dry up. The community, consisting of school management and parents from the villages, has become involved in helping kick off the school irrigation project, with the goal of maximizing crop production and establishing food security (and climate change resilience) for the school and community.

The EWB-RPI Uganda Project Team is working closely with the Buyanga Primary School Headmaster and community leaders, as well as EWB-East Africa, to facilitate the completion of this project and arrive at a successful solution. Through these partnerships, the team will conduct an assessment trip to gather information and baseline data for the project, an implementation trip to construct and install the final irrigation solution, and a monitoring & evaluation trip to monitor the system performance.

Due to the challenging climate change impacts on crop growth, as well as the limited budget/resources that the school and community contribute, the dire need for irrigation to help facilitate more resilient crop growth and water management is clear. By implementing an effective irrigation system, the community will achieve and maintain food security for the school and increase resilience to climate change effects.