Karamoja Resilience Support Unit II Quarter 1 Report FY 2021

The program aims to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of development in the Karamoja region. KRSU II emphasizes the use of existing and new evidence to inform policy and programming in Karamoja. The program has three objectives: Objective 1: Turn Evidence into Action, Objective 2: Promote and Foster Collective Action, and Objective 3: Improve GOU Coordination to Implement Development Plans. Objective 1 focuses on generating and disseminating new evidence to inform development planning and programming in Karamoja. Objective 2 supports coordination of GOU and development partners, including networking among Karamoja-based agencies and identifying potential areas for collective action. Objective 3 broadens support to the Ministry of Karamoja Affairs (MfKA) to better coordinate district and sub-county development plans. During the first quarter of the year 2020 work plan, covering October to December, KRSU II initiated discussions with the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry, and Fisheries (MAAF) about collaboration on a foot and mouth disease (FMD) control strategy. A concept note has been developed by MAAF and will be threshed out in Quarter 2. KRSU II continued to host meetings with donors and partners at the sub-regional level virtually via Zoom and Google Meet platforms. Two KDPG meetings were held in Quarter 1, with the donor group providing feedback on the inception report and activity plan for reviewing KIDP2 and designing KIDP3. A financial review of the activity was conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers Limited (PwC) and covered the first year of the project from November 2019 to September 2020. The project received a LOW overall risk rating. A financial review action plan was developed to track progress on recommended improvements. KRSU II collaborated with several stakeholders, including Mercy Corps, CRS, and the EU's DINU initiative. The program also relocated the Moroto office to a more spacious and safer location within Moroto. The KRSU II team identified a list of learning agenda topics, including evidence on Karamoja pastoralism, policy recommendations for creating economic opportunities for pastoralist youth and women, and barriers to promoting sector growth in Karamoja. The program's progress update is presented in the sections below, with a summary table with progress on work-plan deliverables in the annex.