RIASSUNTO
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, East Africa is plagued by food insecurity, a problem that increases as a result of anthropogenic changes to climate. In particular, droughts and floods destroy an entire season's harvest causing subsistence farmers and their families to struggle for food. In an attempt to mitigate the severe effects of climate change on these farmers and reduce food insecurity in East Africa, we have designed a small-scale aquaponic farming system that simultaneously grows fish and vegetables. This system uses significantly less water to grow crops than traditional farming and does not rely on external inputs of fertilizer, making it more resilient to severe droughts and floods, and reducing impacts on the climate. This paper describes the small-scale aquaponic system we designed for a women's collective in East Africa who help teach women in rural East Africa how to be resilient to climate change. During the 2017 - 2018 academic year, we designed and built the project in Santa Clara, California then deployed to Kampala, Uganda where we taught 4 women how to design and build the system. When we left Uganda, the project was working and since our return to California, the women have reproduced the system in Kenya. Subsequent communication with the women show promise of long term success with attention to power inputs in the future.