Just a few minutes’ walk from his home in the Kyaka II refugee settlement, Kanane Bikanyale keeps a small flock of chickens.

From a modified jerrycan, he pours out black soldier fly larvae into the coup where they disappear in a scrum of pecking chickens.

Bikanyale kept chickens before he arrived in Uganda from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). But rising feed costs made things difficult – a pressure felt by millions of smallholder farmers whose margins are tight.

• Kanane Bikanyale tends to his black soldier fly larvae in a rearing unit in the Kyaka II refugee camp in Uganda

In 2019, he began farming black soldier flies, giving the larvae to his chickens and the tilapia in his small fishpond. The debris and excrement, known as frass, made fertiliser. The flies feed on organic material, from household food scraps to crop residues.

• Kavira Musabingo rears black soldier flies at her home in Kyaka II

Kavira Musabingo came to the settlement in 2018 with her husband, daughter and five grandchildren. Also refugees from conflict in the DRC, the family arrived with nothing.

She joined a women’s group learning to raise black soldier flies. She initially sold her share of the larvae then later, began rearing insects at home.

Now she provides chicken, eggs and vegetables for her family and earns an income from selling what is left over.

• The Kyaka II camp is home to nearly 140,000 refugees and asylum seekers

• A woman feeds black soldier fly larvae to chickens raised as part of a community poultry project at Kyaka II. The chicken coop is next to a fish pond (left).

Uganda hosts a large refugee population; Kyaka II alone, in the west, is home to nearly 140,000 people, most, like Bikanyale and Musabingo, displaced by years of conflict and instability in DRC. Women and children make up 78% of people in the camp. As the settlement expanded, land allocations got smaller: by 2018, new arrivals received plots of 30 by 30 metres. Split between a home and crops, and with humanitarian support declining, families had to grow enough food from less and less space.

About 500 people here now work in 32 insect-farming groups. Insect rearing requires little space or water – trays of insects can be stacked vertically.

• Dried black soldier fly larvae after sieving (top left); mealworms are grown in small containers, which are affordable and easy to set up

Alongside the flies, they raise crickets and mealworms, both eaten in many parts of the world. In Uganda, insects have been traditionally gathered from the wild, making supply seasonal. Urbanisation and western food habits have also changed perceptions: dismissed as rural or backward, insects disappeared from diets.

“Their nutritional potential is particularly relevant for vulnerable groups such as women of reproductive age and children under five, since some species are particularly rich in proteins and micronutrients such as iron and zinc,” says Dorothy Nakimbugwe, an associate professor in the food and technology department at Makerere University in Kampala.

Nakimbugwe has also led Refugee Insect Production for Food and Feed (RefIPro), a project organised by the Danish non-profit Raise, which has worked locally to train and support farmers in Kyaka II since 2018.

• Roasted mealworms are served for breakfast alongside fresh fruit

More than 10 schools have got involved. Among them are Bukere and Kako primary schools, which now run their own insect farms and were involved in a randomised trial involving 342 children testing the effects of mealworm-enriched porridge. The University of Copenhagen, another partner in the project, reports that children grew taller and showed improved body composition.

But first, the insect rearing system has to work. Edward Ssebbombo, working on RefIPro in Kyaka II, has provided technical support over the years, designing farm equipment, including a pedal-powered sieve, sorters made of recycled motorcycle-wheel spokes and Bikanyale’s rail-mounted shelter, which protects the breeding unit from the weather.

There remain challenges. “In a food-insecure setting such as a refugee settlement, households produce very little food waste,” Ssebbombo says.

• Edward Ssebbombo demonstrates his pedal-powered sieve, built from recycled materials

“Farming black soldier flies therefore often requires collecting organic material from markets or other sources,” he says, noting that even when the waste itself is free, “sorting, collecting and transporting it can still be costly for small-scale producers.”

Mealworm production faces similar constraints: larvae are fed maize and wheat bran. At Bukere, families contribute banana and sweet-potato peels, but dry feed is expensive.

• Violet Gwokyalya, chief executive of Mothers Against Malnutrition and Hunger, reviews records from the school feeding trial

Violet Gwokyalya leads Mothers Against Malnutrition and Hunger (Mamah), coordinating RefIPro’s work.

She hopes to involve families through a model in which “parents can rear mealworms at household or community level and supply them to schools, helping sustain school feeding while creating an income opportunity for themselves”.

• Collecting black soldier fly eggs

Outside Kampala, the Kollekt Village, a recycling centre run by a local environmental organisation, works with food markets and waste pickers to separate organic material before it reaches dumpsites, integrating insect farming into a zero-waste system.

In Jinja, Bioconvision turns organic waste from food processors and markets into black soldier fly larvae for animal feed and frass-based fertiliser for farmers, including those farming fish on Lake Victoria. In 2025, the company processed nearly 1,000 tonnes of organic waste, producing about 60 tonnes of fresh larvae and 83 tonnes of fertiliser. Both are connected to Bugs-Africa, a project that promotes black soldier fly waste processing.

• Food waste is sorted at the market in Jinja to be processed using black soldier flies by a local company, Bioconvision (left); dried black soldier fly larvae at the Bioconvision facility

Uganda is also Africa’s second-largest coffee producer, after Ethiopia, an industry with large amounts of plant waste. In Kasese in western Uganda, Proteen, a Ugandan social enterprise, turns coffee pulp into feed protein and frass-based fertiliser.

Insect farming is a rapidly growing market – estimated to be worth up to $8bn (£6bn) by 2030. Increased investment has led to industrial-scale ventures in Europe, Asia and North America but the practice is also spreading across rural tropical regions, where the climate favours insect growth.

• Women working at a coffee washing station, where residues from coffee production are used to rear black soldier fly larvae

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), says animal feed can account for up to 70% of the cost of keeping livestock, leaving farmers exposed.

Enthusiasts believe that insect farming, in scale from a single cut-open jerrycan to industrial facilities, has the potential to reduce the use of soya and fishmeal in animal feed, lowering demand for land and pressure on marine ecosystems.

• Niyongira Buwazi Bazira, a Congolese refugee, harvests kale from his garden, which he fertilises with insects’ frass

In Uganda, a recent conference on insect farming brought together Ssebbombo, Gwokyalya, researchers such as Nakimbugwe and members of refugee communities, alongside representatives from Bugs-Africa, FAO Uganda and public institutions.

At the conference, Ronald Kaggwa, of Uganda’s National Planning Authority called for insect farming to be seen as part of a broader system linking waste management, livestock, aquaculture, income generation and food security, and to be integrated into Uganda’s farming system.

“For this sector to contribute meaningfully to Uganda’s development, we must understand the entire value chain,” he said. “It’s about transforming innovation into productive enterprises, turning research into practical solutions, creating opportunities for communities and contributing to more nutritious, resilient, circular and competitive food systems.”

• Umberto Diecinove’s INSCTS project documents the growing role of insect farming around the world