Second Quarterly Report, January to March 2024: Karamoja Resilience Support Unit II FY 2024/Award Year 5

The overall goal of the program is to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of development assistance in the Karamoja region. KRSU II emphasizes the use of existing and new evidence to guide policy and programming in Karamoja and works closely with the Government of Uganda (GOU) to strengthen their capacity for coordination. The program has three objectives. Objective 1: Turn Evidence into Action, aims to generate and disseminate new evidence, as well as review significant bodies of existing Karamoja research to inform GOU, donors, partners, USAID, and other stakeholders, and guide the development planning and delivery in Karamoja. Objective 2: Promote and Foster Collective Action, supports coordination of GOU, development actors, and humanitarian partners, including support to and promotion of Karamoja networks of both agencies and staff, and identifying potential areas for collective action and actively supporting existing collaborations. Objective 3: Improve GOU Coordination to Implement Development Plans, broadens support to the Ministry of Karamoja Affairs (MfKA) to better coordinate with district and sub-county leadership to operationalize the Karamoja Integrated Development Plan III (KIDP), guide investments, and share results. During the second quarter of the fifth year work plan, covering January to March 2024, KRSU II completed a comparative review of education approaches and models in Karamoja. The review looked at the pros and cons of the different approaches and perceived preferences of the different approaches by respondents, using standard indicators such as availability, accessibility, affordability, cultural acceptance, quality, and terms of inclusion. KRSU II also completed stakeholder consultations for the development of guidelines for participatory water resources management in Karamoja, presenting the structure of the guidelines to MOWE, USAID, DLG, and WASH stakeholders in Karamoja, and incorporating their feedback. Additionally, KRSU II contracted a research team and defined the scope of the review for land tenure and land use changes study in Karamoja. The statement of work and research approach will be presented to the KDPG at the meeting in April, and field work will commence in May 2024. In partnership with KDF, KRSU II commenced community level dissemination of study results from the KRSU II conflict studies, using radio stations in Karamoja. Key messages from the studies were developed and translated into Karimojong and Pokot languages, with radio transmissions underway since March 2024. KRSU II also supports coordination of GOU, development actors, and humanitarian partners, including support to and promotion of Karamoja networks of both agencies and staff, and identifying potential areas for collective action and actively supporting existing collaborations. The program works to enhance the GOU's capacity to assume coordination and transfer this role to them as appropriate. A summary table with progress against work plan deliverables is presented in Annex 1.