Empowering Agropreneurs Through Sustainable Agriculture in Uganda
Farmers in Uganda face key challenges such as lack of market opportunities for their produce, lack of access to finance, pests and diseases affecting crop production and the effects of climate change. Due to low income, farmers often make no investment in inputs to improve their produce quality and yields. In addition, many farmers are not organized into groups where they could otherwise more easily access quality inputs, training, certification and other opportunities to increase their livelihood. Issues to do with lack of organisation into groups don’t just affect the farmers – but it also makes it more difficult for traders or those seeking to offer inputs, such as solar panels, irrigation systems or organic fertilisers to access smallholder farmers.
In June 2015, Agro-preneur Group Limited was registered in Uganda to address these challenges. We are looking to transform the lives of smallholder farmers and their landscapes in Uganda, through introducing regenerative agriculture-based business models that boost their crop variety, productivity and incomes, while helping to restore ecosystems and reduce the impacts of climate change.
Agro-preneur offers farmers a market for all their produce, over and above their security needs, and through our extension support teams and digital financial inclusion, we ensure optimal yields, premiums for farmers’ produce and professionalisation of smallholder farming businesses. We also offer a linkage service in acting as an intermediary between farmers and suppliers or traders, giving farmers greater access to organic farming inputs, financial services and agricultural insurance which is a work in progress.
Overall, we provide a unique package that can transform the lives of the smallholder farmers on a social, economic and environmental level and give other specialists and actors within the supply chain valuable access to groups of farmers, who can benefit from their inputs and services.
So far, we have registered over 10,000 farmers that are supplying our different business initiatives and plan to be working with 25,000 farmers by the end of 2028.