LONDON, UK: Inqo Investments Limited (INQO) announced a collaboration with Belmont University, Nashville on its Conservation and Rural Enterprises (CARE) Project with the aim of using enterprise to tackle environmental and social issues around the Budongo Forest in Uganda.

Through a $4 million US dollar grant, the CARE project will invest in small and medium size enterprises (SME) in and around Budongo Forest over the next three years.

The 825 km2 Budongo Forest is home to more than 600 chimpanzees, classified as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), as well as a wide range of other flora and fauna.

The forest is part of the Murchison Falls National Park Conservation Area which is the largest protected area in Uganda covering 3,840 km2 and a key area for the country’s biodiversity conservation.

Budongo Forest faces several threats including illegal bush meat poaching, deforestation for charcoal production and increasing population pressure around the forest fringes. The CARE project is designed around the belief that social and environmental issues are interrelated and that poverty is the main cause of deforestation in this region.

By working with communities in and around the Budongo Forest to build scalable and sustainable SMEs, the CARE project aims to create jobs and increase livelihood in the community and to provide alternative employment to activities such as bushmeat poaching and charcoal production. Examples of enterprises currently being explored include an eco-lodge, sustainable agriculture, agri-processing and solar induction cook stove assembly plant.

The project will be managed by Inqo Investments Ltd., one of the pioneers in the socio-environmental impact investment space having founded the Kuzuko Private Game Reserve in South Africa with the expressed aim of creating jobs in an area of over 70% unemployment.

INQO is a South Africa-based social impact company listed on the London Aquis Stock Exchange Growth Market. It makes strategic acquisitions and investments in businesses designed to tackle poverty and provide employment, products and services to the poor in Low Income Countries (LICs).