The Karamoja Resilience Support Unit (KRSU) is an initiative of USAID/Uganda aimed at increasing resilience and economic development in Karamoja. The KRSU works closely with the Karamoja Development Partners Group to provide reviews, studies and analyses of development and humanitarian programs in Karamoja, and related policy issues. Our focus is on translating evidence and knowledge into practice, through collaborative approaches. The project is implemented by the Feinstein International Center, Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, at Tufts University, with offices in Kampala and Moroto, Uganda.
What is working and why?
Which approaches need reshaping?
What can be scaled up, and where is the evidence to support this?
An effective early warning system (EWS) is a prerequisite for timely response to avert and mitigate the impacts of disasters that affect pastoralist and agro-pastoralist communities. Whereas there exist various forms of EWS in Uganda, the main concerns have been whether the early warning information is timely, accurate, accessible, and elicits early action. These questions point at inefficiencies in the conventional EWS in the country and the importance of the indigenous early warning system (IEWS) used by rural communities. These indigenous systems are especially important where conventional early warning information is inaccessible or coarse and therefore not suitable for guiding location-specific decisions.
In July 2022 the Ugandan media reported that 900 people had died of hunger or hunger-related diseases in the Karamoja sub-region since February 2022, and that 8 out of 10 households had limited or no food.i
This real-time review aims to document the events that led to Karamoja’s hunger crisis in 2022, the reporting of the worsening situation by early warning systems, and the responses of the Government of Uganda and the international aid community. The review took place from the September 27–October 21, 2022.