Embrace climate smart technology, CEPA tells Lango farmers

2 November 2023, 5:52 pm

By Mike Okwang Ogule & Isaac Newton Abili

Clean Energy Partnership Africa (CEPA) has urged farmers and business communities in Lango Sub-region to embrace climate smart technology in a struggle to mitigate the current effects brought about by climate change.

While speaking to a group of business proprietors, under their umbrella Uganda Chamber of Commerce Aduku recently, David Ebong Abongo, the coordinator of Clean Energy Partnership Africa, (CEPA) said the use of solar power is one of technologies that are cheaper for use than fossil oil such as diesel.

According to Mr. Ebong, climate smart technologies encompass the use of clean energy technologies that are less destructive to the environment than fossil fuel.

Ebong Abongo added that as CEPA, their focus is to decentralize renewable energy technology for powering agriculture into a green shared future, to deal with the effect of climate change.

He, however, added that CEPA provides solar powered machines such as archery, water pump machines for irrigation among others.

Mr. Aweri Denis, the chairperson of chamber of commerce Aduku, commended Ebong for coming up with the initiative at this time when the whole world is crying about the effects brought about by climate change, saying the initiative will save the future and the next generation.

Aweri also urged his fellow businessmen to adapt to this new technology since climatic change hasn’t skipped any entity.

Godfrey Agura, the proprietor of Abur Traders, on the other hand said government is currently coming up with many taxes, making it hard for business owners to practice such new technology since it is also expensive.

CEPA is operating in the entire Lango Sub-region, under the scope of providing productive use of energy for post-harvest value addition in agriculture.

Agriculture is a very critical sector in the Ugandan economy employing 73 percent of the population (71% female and 59% male). About 76% of the Ugandan population is rural where the majority are smallholder farmers with nearly 68% of them relying on subsistence agriculture.

Although agriculture is the single largest employer, transformation is very slow in Uganda according to World Bank.

Clean Energy Partnership Africa (CEPA) is supported in the preparation of business plans for mechanization of agricultural production, agro-processing, and conversion of agricultural and agro-processing waste into biomass energy according to Mr. Ebong David Abongo.