On September 3, 2015, the Department of Relief, Disaster Preparedness and Management in the Office of the Prime Minister of Uganda, in partnership with the University of Maryland Department of Geographical Sciences, and Environmental Surveys, Information, Planning and Policy Systems (ESIPPS) International, hosted a high level stakeholders’ meeting to formally introduce the AgriSense-STARS project. The objectives of the meeting were to:

A) introduce the AgriSense-STARS (Spurring a Transformation for Agriculture Through Remote Sensing) project and overview proposed methods for monitoring crop conditions for food security in Uganda to showcasing a pilot crop monitoring study in Moroto district in Karamoja region planned for the 2016-growing season

B) identify and engage potential key partners/stakeholders in the country to identify collaboration links

C) identify avenues and possible contributions of AgriSense-STARS to current crop monitoring in Uganda.

The workshop - which assembled participants from key government ministries, departments and agencies, research institutions, development partners, academia and the private sector - was well received by stakeholders who deemed the project timely and unprecedented, recognizing the urgent need for crop monitoring that is lacking in capacity in Uganda and most importantly the avenues provided by remote sensing data in filling these data gaps and providing near-real time information on crop conditions.

Representatives from the Ministry of Agriculture Animal Industry and Fisheries expressed interest and urgent need to implement AgriSense-STARS methods, tools and to make available monitoring products as they directly tie into the ministry’s mandate to monitor agriculture. The AgriSense-STARS team, led by Drs. Jan Dempewolf and Inbal Becker Reshef, is now working to redesign the monitoring plan for the 2016 season expanding to the entire Karamoja and Eastern Uganda region as per the recommendation of the Office of the Prime Minister which is rolling out several disaster risk management and early warning projects that AgriSense-STARS tools can contribute to.

The meeting was featured in the NTV evening news during which Ph.D. Candidate/FRA Catherine Nakalembe was interviewed - the clip can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VER-PjQzbgA