This baseline report examines the Refugee Agricultural Value Chains for Economic Self-reliance (RAVES) project in Uganda. The programme adopts an innovative approach, with a focus on providing sustainable long-term solutions beyond humanitarian assistance that mitigate the negative effects of displacement, uplift refugees, and support host communities. The approach allows the refugees to contribute to the economy of the host community without creating social tension. The project supports both refugee and host communities to engage in high value crop value chains, linking them to private sector actors.

This baseline report focuses on Uganda and is implemented in Kiryandongo district among both refugees and host communities. The district is predominantly agriculture based and has the biophysical conditions suitable for growing passion fruit.

Our analysis suggests that the randomization between treatment and control was fully successful in host communities but less so in the refugees’ settlements. The variations we find between host communities and refugees’ settlements when it comes to demographics, food security, endowment of land and constraints in agricultural production hint towards large structural differences between the two groups. This calls for tailored approaches such as a gender-specific one to address the two communities' specific obstacles to participation in commercial value chains.