This Terminal Evaluation (TE) has been conducted as part of the Monitoring and Evaluation plan of the UNDP/GEF Project: “Enabling Environment for SLM to overcome Land Degradation in the Uganda Cattle Corridor Districts”, and will be referred to as the “Project” in the scope of this report. The TE mission to Uganda was conducted from 14th to 23nd December 2015. Extensive consultations with the project partners were also conducted prior and following the mission to ensure a good understanding of the project’s results; leading to the submission of the TE report on the date of this report.

Brief Description of Project

The Uganda Cattle Corridor covers an estimated area of 84,000 km2 (i.e. 43% of the country's total land area), and is home of 6.6 million people. The corridor is a semi-arid transition zone across the centre of the country, between the wet forest/grassland mosaics to the south around Lake Victoria, and the arid grasslands on the Sudanese boarder in the north (Karamoja). Most of the cattle corridor was traditionally inhabited by pastoralists who communally grazed their herds on the range, mixed with limited rain-fed agriculture. The corridor is host to a mixed production system comprising of nomadic pastoralists, agro-pastoralists and subsistence farmers; all subsisting in the drylands with a production system characterized by five critical facts: unclear, insecure land and resource tenure, increasing demand for biomass energy, low levels of economic growth, high and growing population and uncertain climatic conditions. The corridor exhibits serious land and resource degradation driven by overgrazing, inappropriate agriculture practices and charcoal production leading to deforestation. Overall impact of degradation has been the disruption of ecosystem services, particularly provisioning services due to: habitat fragmentation that reduces complexity and diversity; soil erosion with consequent declining soil fertility and declining productivity; and, invasion by termites and nutrient loading of water bodies. Weaknesses in the policy and policy implementation, weak capacity for the use of knowledge to guide land use planning and the lack of alternative income generating activities to support local economic development and sustainable land management are three key barriers that hinder adoption of sustainable land management systems in the cattle corridor.

The project’s goal is “Sustainable Land Management” that provides the basis for economic development, food security and sustainable livelihoods while restoring the ecological integrity of the Cattle Corridor ecosystem. The objective of the project is to provide land users and managers with the enabling policy, institutional and capacity environment for effective adoption of SLM within the complexity of the cattle corridor production system, achieved through 3 major outcomes plus a project management component.

The objective of the project is to provide land users and managers with the enabling policy, institutional and capacity environment for effective adoption of SLM within the complexity of the cattle corridor production system. The project sought to achieve three outcomes:

Outcome 1: The policy, regulatory and institutional environment support sustainable land management in the cattle corridor (in particular policy and legislation for sustainable charcoal and tenure security strengthened).

Outcome 2: Knowledge based land use planning forms the basis for improving dry lands sustainable economic development

Outcome 3: Local economic development strengthened through diversification and improved access to finance and insurance

The Project Document was approved jointly by Government of Uganda, GEF and UNDP in August 2010 for the duration of four years. The Project is Executed by the Government of Uganda’s Ministry of Finance, Economic Planning and Development and implemented by Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries through Project Management Unit (PMU) with support from UNDP Country Office (UNDP CO) in close coordination with various other institutions and local communities. UNDP as implementing agency was responsible for the completion of all activities including procurement, recruitment, monitoring, and financial disbursement. The Project has been executed in accordance with the standard rules and procedures of the UNDP NEX Execution Modality. The Project budget is US$ 4,230,730 of which US$ 1,830,730 is the GEF Grant and US$200,000 is provided by the UNDP CO. The remaining financing is provided by the Government of Uganda (US$ 100,000) and resource users in the corridor (US$100,000).