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EUBCE 2024 - Daphine KAMUSINGIZE - Operationalising the East African Bioeconomy Strategy: Industrial Readiness of The Banana Fibre Subsector

Operationalising the East African Bioeconomy Strategy: Industrial Readiness of The Banana Fibre Subsector

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Sustainability assessments and stakeholders inclusion in bioenergy and bioeconomy

Operationalising the East African Bioeconomy Strategy: Industrial Readiness of The Banana Fibre Subsector

Short Introductive summary

The East African regional bio-economy strategy promotes the utilization of agricultural residues through bio-based industrial development. This presents an opportunity for the region, famous for banana production, to operationalize the strategy through upscaling banana fibre production and processing of the current banana fibre cottage industry. But there is a knowledge gap on the status of industrial readiness (IR) required to guide this development. This study uses the case of Uganda to explore the status of IR of its banana fibre sector, and identify strategic requirements to sustainably scale-up production and processing from diverse readiness dimensions: technological, innovation, societal, and sustainability aspects. Specifically, we mapped biomass flows, actors and their relations; assessed the readiness status of banana farmers to sustainably supply raw material for the industry; and described, from the stakeholders’ perspective, the factors relevant in shaping the industry towards readiness for a largescale bio-based industry. Using a stepwise mixed qualitative and quantitative methods approach, we collected and analysed empirical data. Our results present three key messages: (1) Upscaling the sector to industrial level is timely but still limited at all dimensions of readiness; (2) Sustainable supply of raw material strongly depends on finding suitable alternatives to competing biomass uses, and (3) Successful readiness is dependent on deliberate investment in human, technical and infrastructure capacity; public acceptance and negotiation of trade-offs among actors.

Presenter

Moderator portrait

Daphine KAMUSINGIZE

National Agricultural Research Organization, UGANDA

Presenter's biography

Daphine, aged 35, is a Ugandan. Has worked with NARO since 2012 in different scientific and managerial capacities on several research projects, majority oriented towards improving the wholistic functioning of banana cropping systems in SSA. Currently pursuing her PhD at WUR, Netherlands.

Biographies and Short introductive summaries are supplied directly by presenters and are published here unedited


Co-authors:

D. Kamusingize, National Agricultural Research Organization, Kampala, UGANDA
E. Ronner, Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, THE NETHERLANDS
G. Taulya, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Kampala, UGANDA
R. de Vos, Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, THE NETHERLANDS
P. Namanya, National Agricultural Research Organization, Kampala, UGANDA
J. Kubiriba, National Agricultural Research Organization, Kampala, UGANDA
K. Descheemaeker, Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, THE NETHERLANDS

Session reference: 2AV.3.16