U-RIL
Response Innovation Lab in Uganda
Overview
The Uganda Response Innovation Lab (U-RIL) was founded in 2018 by Save the Children Uganda. The main objective of the lab is to support the humanitarian response to 1.4 million refugees from eight East African countries, mainly from the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, and their host communities across 13 districts in the country through innovative approaches, systems, technologies and products.
Uganda is the country hosting the largest number of refugees in Africa, with 60% being children and 110,000 persons with specific needs. The Government of Uganda implements a progressive approach, called the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework, and provides refugees with freedom of movement, the right to work and establish businesses, access social services, and an allocation of land for shelter and agricultural production. However, challenges come with hosting such large numbers of refugees over a long period of time, and the level of unmet needs among both the refugee and host communities is critical. Despite an integrated approach to service provision, refugees have higher needs than host community members in terms of access to livelihoods, food security, health and nutrition, shelter, and non-food items. A 2018 vulnerability study found refugees much more likely to be living in poverty than the host population, even while receiving assistance.
Updates
Challenges
Developing the preparedness and resilience of the most vulnerable communities takes a dedicated effort to identify the specific challenges faced in the delivery of basic services (healthcare, water and sanitation, power, communications) to remote communities, marginalized groups and other hard-to-reach Somalis. Community-based organizations, local governments and other entities facing these challenges will need opportunities to uptake local or global solutions that will help to remove barriers to providing these services in an emergency.
A range of humanitarian and recovery needs exists in Uganda and the growing influx of refugees and asylum seekers from the surrounding region have exacerbated problems faced by local communities. Given the crisis escalation, the Uganda RIL supports response efforts and innovates around challenges in order to improve the lives of the affected communities during the crisis response, and during their transition to self-reliance.
To date, the following challenges have been identified:
CHALLENGE 1: SUSTAINABLE & MARKET-DRIVEN LIVELIHOODS
Employment creation, skills development, connections with private sector opportunities, and markets do not match the demand, particularly of young people in refugee settlements and refugee-hosting communities.
CHALLENGE 2: FINANCIAL INCLUSION AND DIGITAL SKILLS
Cash-based assistance is a modality of assistance that is increasingly used in Uganda. This acts as a driver to financial inclusion but also reveals the gaps in access to financial services and both financial and digital skills among refugee and host communities.
CHALLENGE 2: QUALITY & CONTINUOUS EDUCATION
Identified areas are cost-effective and result-oriented professional development for teachers and improved learning environments and outcomes for children (such as more focus on numeracy and literacy and multi-lingual support). These challenges, pre-existing before the pandemic, have been heightened by the prolonged school closure since the Covid-19 outbreak.
CHALLENGE 3: SUSTAINABLE AND SAFE ACCESS TO WATER, ENERGY, AND WASTE MANAGEMENT
On the topic of energy, in particular, challenges in terms of matching the supply and demand for clean energy solutions that are reliable, affordable, and accessible and raising awareness among potential users have been identified.
CHALLENGE 4: QUALITY AND ACCESS TO HEALTH SERVICES
Including but not limited to sexual and reproductive health with a focus on adolescents and psycho-social support.
CHALLENGE 5: EMPOWERMENT AND INCLUSION OF MARGINALIZED PEOPLE
Particularly women or people living with a disability.
The challenges are determined from a mapping of all local stakeholders involved in the response.
What We Do
Uganda is home to a vibrant and growing community of innovators, many of which are looking to help with the recovery from, preparedness toward and resilience to crisis. While some funding opportunities exists for commercial products, social entrepreneurs and innovative non-profits do not have access to the capital they need to prototype, test and scale their solutions.
U-RIL provides tools and guidance for actors to jointly develop solutions, whether using existing approaches or incubating innovations. The Lab supports events, convening actors around humanitarian and nexus challenges, problem analysis, promotion of innovations that already work and matching problems with solutions.
You can learn more about RIL’s overall approach by visiting our What We Do page.
Connecting people and solutions
U-LEARN UGANDA
U-Learn believes the refugee response is most impactful when it maximizes the use of quality evidence, and deeply integrates refugee voices and preferences. U-Learn acts as a public good – supporting a wide range of refugee response actors to continually improve their programming by making use of high-quality learning, evidence, and insights.
The Uganda Learning, Evidence, Accountability, and Research Network (U-Learn) is a 3-year UKAID funded program delivered in Uganda by the Response Innovation Lab (hosted by Save the Children) in consortium with IMPACT Initiatives and the International Rescue Committee. It is designed to promote improved outcomes for refugees and host communities in Uganda. In collaboration with the government and a wide range of implementers and stakeholders, U-Learn specializes in Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP), Research, and Learning. U-Learn delivers a range of assessments, convener events, training, resource curation, and technical assistance to support actors across the response.
U-RIL Projects
Solution Packs
As a part of the MatchMake function, the Response Innovation Labs produce Solutions Packs for each challenge they run. The packets go to the Challenge holder for a decision to be made around solutions. Below are samples of some of the packets developed from past challenges.
Innovations
As a part of the Response Innovation Labs support function, both global and local innovators are supported through the labs. Below are a list of innovations the lab has supported. You can visit the SMILE portal to view other innovations developed or tested in Uganda.
We just added a new addition to our Open Resources hub: MatchMaker Solutions Packs! Free to access for all, the guidebook helping organisations and networks moving from “we have a challenge” to “here’s what we can test and try”.