The protracted refugee crisis and resource management: a multidisciplinary approach for Agriculture, Water and Energy challenges in refugee hosting communities in Uganda

Uganda is the largest refugee-hosting country in Africa, with over 1.4 million refugees. More than 50% of the refugees are hosted in the West Nile region of the country and 70% of them live below the national poverty level. In some districts, refugees double the host population. This has resulted in increased competition for land and water resources thus, rising tensions between refugees and host communities. Considering the particular challenges of agriculture, water and energy provision in refugee and host communities, the Faculty of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences at Muni University, Uganda, the Institute for Development Research at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria and the Ugandan NGO Vision for Humanity are initiating a new transdisciplinary partnership. The team will focus on three main activities designed to create effective co-ownership of the partnership and its objectives; namely; (i) open and structured exploration (months 1 and 2) for gaining a deeper understanding on refugee and host community issues relating to agriculture, water and energy, and generating reliable data; (ii) multi-stakeholder dialogue (month 3) to deepen the initial contact and rapport between the partners interested in joining and co-learning in the full AWE-partnership. This will create a platform of committed partners sharing the vision of and responsibilities for drafting and implementing the proposed full project; and (iii) development of a realistic, effective, and fully collaborative academic partnership proposal (month 4) integrating outputs from exploration and multi-stakeholder dialogue. Data and articles generated will be published in open access. Muni and BOKU University staff will benefit from joint capacity building. All team members will benefit from applying a participatory and gender transformative approach that gives equal voice to everyone involved and that allows for open, critical, constructive, and trustful exchanges.