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Uganda National Forum For Scaling Investment In Solar-Powered Irrigation Systems

Uganda National Forum for Scaling investment in Solar-Powered Irrigation Systems

Date: 06 - 06 May 2026

Location: Golden Tulip Hotel, Kampala, Uganda

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Uganda’s agricultural sector is increasingly threatened by climate variability, prolonged dry spells, and the declining reliability of rainfall. Solar-Powered Irrigation Systems (SPIS) are emerging as one of the most promising climate-smart technologies to strengthen resilience and increase productivity for the country’s smallholder farmers.

On the 6th May UNEP-Copenhagen Climate Centre together with FAO, the Royal Danish Embassy in Uganda, MercyCorp, GGGI and UNCDF will host the “National Forum for Scaling investment in Solar-Powered Irrigation Systems”.

The event will highlight the high-level investment case for SPIS, showcase innovative aggregator-based and blended-finance models, and explore opportunities to integrate SPIS into national climate investment plans and adaptation finance pipelines. The meeting will also serve as a platform for strengthening partnerships with key ecosystem actors - including technology providers, agribusinesses, off-takers, insurers, and farmer organizations - to support market-driven roll-out of SPIS for climate-resilient agriculture across Uganda.

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Meet the speakers

Mathilde Brix Pedersen

Advisor - Climate and Energy
Mathilde Brix Pedersen
Email: mathilde.brixpedersen@un.org

LinkedIn: View Profile

Bio

Mathilde Brix Pedersen has broad international experience from her work within the area of clean energy, energy access and sustainable livelihoods. Her work includes project development in the wind power industry in Canada, policy analysis, research and consultancy work on energy access and poverty alleviation in Africa and South East Asia as well as non-profit entrepreneurship to empower homeless people.

Mathilde’s research focuses on institutional, policy- and socio-economic aspects of clean energy diffusion in developing countries including the role of private entrepreneurs in rural electrification, primarily in Sub-Saharan Africa. In her PhD, she looked at private business models to bring electricity to rural off-grid communities in East Africa/Kenya through solar-powered mini-grids.

She currently works on a project that will demonstrate the integration of a small wind turbine into a solar PV mini-grid for rural electrification with the aim to reduce cost of electricity and to support local value creation. More broadly, her work focuses on 1) stimulating large- scale diffusion of clean technologies through markets creation incentives 2) firm level and industry level process for diffusion, system building and upgrading 3) effects of rural electrification at the end-user level in regards to productive use, poverty aspects, power relations and livelihoods. Her research draws on the analytical perspectives of sustainability transitions, innovation systems, niche development, global value chain analysis, hybrid organisations, institutional logics, and planned interventions.

Countries of work experience include Canada, the UK, Vietnam, Kenya and Tanzania.
James Haselip

Senior Advisor - Climate and Energy
James Haselip
Email: james.haselip@un.org

LinkedIn: View Profile

Bio

To date my professional work has been a mix of academic research, public and private consultancy and project management related to various aspects of sustainable energy technology and policy in developing countries, mostly in support of efforts to abate greenhouse gas emissions. The focus of my research and professional interest has evolved, from a basis in political-economic analysis of energy market liberalisation to understanding, designing and implementing enabling frameworks for the dissemination of sustainable energy and climate change mitigation technologies.

To explore these issues I have used mixed methods including multi-criteria analysis, economic baseline and social cost-benefit analysis, market assessments and ex-post outcome mapping. I have been involved in the UNFCCC-mandated Technology Needs Assessment project since 2010, as a country and regional coordinator. This has led to an overriding focus on understanding the role that international agencies and governments have in actively creating markets for clean technology uptake and diffusion, and how to involve the private sector in driving forward the process of clean technological transitions.

Since 2003 I have worked in over 20 countries in the Global South (especially Africa and LatAm), constituting a significant network of contacts, within Government, UN, private sector and expert consultants. In recent years I have also worked on the issue of energy access for displaced populations and how strategic donor interventions and private investment can deliver co-benefits to host communities as well as refugees, stimulating economic development and technology upgrading.

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Uganda National Forum for Scaling investment in Solar-Powered Irrigation Systems

Meet the speakers

Mathilde Brix Pedersen

James Haselip

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