Entrepreneurship Zone: 07 February 2021:Vertical farming: Ugandan company develops solution for urban agriculture

Sun Feb 7 08:49:13 CAT 2021

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Entrepreneurship Zone: 07 February  2021:Vertical farming: Ugandan company
develops solution for urban agriculture

We speak to Lilian Nakigozi, founder of Women Smiles Uganda, a company that
manufactures and sells vertical farms used to grow crops in areas where
there is limited space.

1. How did you come up with the idea to start Women Smiles Uganda?

Women Smiles Uganda is a social enterprise formed out of passion and
personal experience. I grew up with a single mother and eight siblings in
Katanga, one of the biggest slums in Kampala, Uganda. I experienced hunger
and poverty where we lived. There was no land for us to grow crops and we
didn’t have money to buy food. Life was hard; we would often go to sleep on
empty stomachs and our baby sister starved to death.

Growing up like that, I pledged to use my knowledge and skills to come up
with an idea that could solve hunger and, at the same time, improve people’s
livelihoods, particularly women and young girls living in the urban slums.
In 2017, while studying business at Makerere University, I had the idea of
developing a vertical farm. This came amid so many challenges: a lack of
finance and moral support. I would use the money provided to me for lunch as
a government student to save for the initial capital of my venture.

I managed to accumulate $300 and used this to buy materials to manufacture
the first 20 vertical farms. I gave these to 20 families and, in 2018, we
fully started operations in different urban slums.

2. Tell us about your vertical farms and how they work.

Women Smiles vertical farms are made out of wood and recycled plastic
materials. Each unit is capable of growing up to 200 plants. The product
also has an internal bearing system which turns 360° to guarantee optimal
use of the sunlight and is fitted with an inbuilt drip irrigation system and
greenhouse material to address any agro-climatic challenges.

The farms can be positioned on a rooftop, veranda, walkway, office building
or a desk. This allows the growth of crops throughout the year, season after
season, unaffected by climatic changes like drought.

In addition, we train our customers on how to make compost manure using
vermicomposting and also provide them with a market for their fresh produce.

Harvesting of tomatoes grown on a vertical farm.

3. Explain your revenue model.

Women Smiles Uganda generates revenue by selling affordable, reliable and
modern vertical farms at $35, making a profit margin of $10 on each unit.
The women groups are recruited into our training schemes and we teach them
how to use vertical farming to grow crops and make compost manure by
vermicomposting. Women groups become our outgrowers of fruits and
vegetables. We buy the fresh produce from our outgrowers and resell to
restaurants, schools and hotels.

We also make money through partnering with NGOs and other small private
organisations to provide training in urban farming concepts to the
beneficiaries of their projects.

4. What are some of the major challenges of running this business?

The major challenge we face is limited funds by the smallholder farmers to
purchase the vertical farms. However, we mitigate this by putting some of
them into our outgrower scheme which helps them to generate income from the
fresh produce we buy. We have also linked some of them to financial
institutions to access finance.

5. How do you generate sales?

We reach our customers directly via our marketing team which moves door to
door, identifying organised women groups and educating them about the
benefits of vertical farming for improved food security. Most of our
customers are low-income earners and very few of them have access to the
internet.

However, we do also make use of social media platforms like Facebook to
reach out to our customers, especially the youth.

In addition, we organise talk shows and community gatherings with the
assistance of local leaders with whom we work hand in hand to provide
educational and inspirational materials to people, teaching them about smart
agriculture techniques.

6. Who are your main competitors?

Just like any business, we have got competitors; our major competitors
include Camp Green and Spark Agro-Initiatives.

7. What mistakes have you made in business and what did you learn from them?

As a victim of hunger and poverty, my dream was for every family in slums to
have a vertical farm. I ended up giving some vertical farms on credit.
Unfortunately, most of them failed to pay and we ended up with huge losses.

This taught me to shift the risk of payment default to a third party. Every
customer who may need our farms on credit is now linked to our partner
micro-finance bank. By doing this, it is the responsibility of the bank to
recover the funds from our customers and it has worked well.

8. Apart from this industry, name an untapped business opportunity in
Uganda.

Manufacturing of cooler sheds for the storage of perishable agricultural
produce is one untapped opportunity. Currently, Ugandan smallholder farmers
lose up to 40% of their fresh produce because of a lack of reliable cold
storage systems.

Providing a cheap and reliable 24/7 cold storage system would dramatically
reduce post-harvest losses for these farmers.-Howwemadeitinafrica

A Women Smiles vertical farm

Invest Wisely!

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