Private Sector Investment in a Changing Climate: Resilient rice value chain development in Uganda

The increased risk and uncertainty that result from the impacts of climate change creates challenges for all actors along agricultural value chains. The domestic private sector plays an important role in driving and shaping the development of agricultural value chains. Specifically, the private sector has the potential to direct their investments in ways that enable climate risk management by different value chain actors, simultaneously reducing risks to their own bottom line.

This initiative specifically focuses on rice value chains in Uganda, where rice is one of the priority crops for the government's efforts to achieve food security and improve household income. The initiative targets two main sets of actors: private sector actors (mostly domestic seed companies and commercial banks) in Uganda who are investing at one or several points along selected rice value chains, and public sector actors (i.e., relevant government ministries, departments). For private sector actors, PSI–Climate seeks to demonstrate how climate risk management can be supported along agricultural value chains and the consequent benefits to their own business goals and objectives. For public sector actors, it aims to identify a set of policy options that encourage climate risk management by small and medium-sized enterprises, domestic commercial banks and other actors along agricultural value chains.

The research focuses on two case studies. The first is on domestic private investments in new rice seeds in Northern Uganda in partnership with a domestic seed company, Equator Seeds. The second looks at investments in financial products with a commercial bank, the Centenary Bank, in Eastern Uganda. Data collection in both cases is based on focus group discussions, interviews and dialogue processes with key actors along the selected rice value chains, as well as engagement with relevant experts. IISD is implementing this project in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development and the Economic Policy Research Center (EPRC).

This project builds on IISD's previous work on building climate-resilient agricultural value chains.