Dear the Crypto / Web3 community across the world:

I am coming to you as the VERY last resort. I am asking you to help me bring about some change where I live.

Specifically, I am asking you to help me raise a few hundred thousand coins (or about 16 bitcoin to be exact), to enable me install a cereal/grain cleaning, drying and storage facility that will enable the rural poor in my region to access markets for their grains — and thus place them on a self-sustainable path from chronic extreme poverty.

 

About me:

My name is Anthony, a farmer in Kamuli, eastern Uganda.

I have never been into crypto, but this August (2024) is when I thought it was probably time for me to befriend crypto, at least as a way of bringing about some change.

My own life has been a real mess. But what bothers me most, is the level of poverty in my region as whole.

Some context… before COVID-19 came, the World Bank said (in 2019), that 70% of the extreme poor in Sub Saharan Africa were packed in only 10 countries — and Uganda was among those ten. Even among those 10 countries, according to the World Bank, Uganda still had the sluggishiest (i.e., the slowest) poverty reduction rate overall, as shown in this graph.

Even in Uganda, my region Busoga, which has long been the poorest in eastern Uganda, has since 2017 doubled as the poorest not just in eastern Uganda, but also nationally.

In 2023, The Monitor, a Ugandan local daily, said: “Busoga is the sub-region with most people living in a complete poverty cycle followed by Bukedea and Karamoja. This is according to findings released in 2021/2022 by Mr Vincent Fred Senono, the Principal Statistician and head of analysis at the Uganda Bureau of Statistics”.

Even in Busoga, our two neighboring districts Kamuli & Buyende, being the furthermost, remotest area of Busoga on the shores of Lake Kyoga, have the least economic activity, and are arguably Busoga’s most destitute.

Meaning: while Uganda as a country is the very last in Sub Saharan Africa in terms of poverty reduction rate (per the World bank), our region Busoga is the worst in Uganda, and even in Busoga, our 2 neighboring districts Kamuli & Buyende, being the remotest, are clearly the poorest.

This, coupled with my own lifelong battle with ultra poverty, is what makes me want to use my remaining time on earth to do my part on poverty. I am also founder of the Uganda Community Farm, or the UCF, a nonprofit social enterprise that aims to end extreme poverty.

Photos: 12345678910. | twitter: @kaluluanthony

 

What I want to change:

Every household in our region is a farmer, and the biggest challenge that keeps every farmer in our region in chronic poverty, is the inability to access markets for our produce.

Since 2019, my team has run a project that trains rural farmers in Kamuli & Buyende on white sorghum; provides them with initial inputs, then we build market linkages for our produce. Please see some 45 photos from our work in the first planting season of 2024 (March – August) here.

Our goal from 2024 onward, is to expand this work and cover every village in Kamuli & Buyende — an area that comprises 1,123 villages, with over a million people, and 165,000+ households. This is where the grain facility that I am asking you to help us install, will help. Details here.

 

Impact of the grain facility:

  • Postharvest handling.

    With our new goal of covering every village in Kamuli & Buyende with white sorghum, this facility will enhance our postharvest handling capacity, enabling us to work with any number of farmers, while linking our produce with many reputable buyers.

  •  Engaging institutional buyers.

    Currently, our farmers’ sorghum is bought by Uganda’s biggest brewer Uganda Breweries (UBL). Once this grain facility is in place, it will make many other big buyers to view us as strategic partners (including international relief agencies like the WFP, UNHCR, World Vision, GOAL, Red Cross etc), enabling rural farmers in our region to access high value markets for their produce.

  • Diversifying incomes for the rural poor.

    This grain facility will create market linkages not just for sorghum, but also for many other crops like maize, millet, rice, beans, peas etc, which are also bought by many institutional buyers like the UN’s WFP (among others), but which rural farmers in our region have previously never had a mainstream market for. This will enable the rural poor in our region to diversify their incomes and escape ultra poverty.

  • Catalyzing self-sustainability.

    Currently, our project provides all our target farmers with free initial inputs (seed, tarpaulins, liquid fertilizers/pesticides, spray pumps etc) only as a hand-up, because many can’t afford them. This facility will change this by giving our target farmers a steady income stream for their produce. This will give these farmers the self-motivation to produce more, and in turn, the ability to use their own incomes to secure the needed inputs, making our work self-sustaining.

  • Self-scalability.

    The presence of this facility shall in itself be an assurance to local farmers of the presence of a ready market (including those farmers whom the UCF hasn’t been supporting directly), giving them the self-urge to secure the needed inputs on their own — catalyzing our goal of covering every village in Kamuli/Buyende, and making our overall work self-scaling.

 

Incidentally:

Having this grain facility isn’t simply about convenience in postharvest handling. It is also a market necessity.

In poor countries like ours, most food loss occurs at harvest due to poor postharvest systems. But putting aside the income that is lost in the process, poor postharvest systems are also said to be the leading cause of aflatoxin contamination especially in grains, with 75% of Uganda’s grains said to be contaminated with aflatoxins, as said in the Monitor.

Aflatoxin contamination in food has been blamed for things like cancer, and there are many cases where Uganda’s grain produce has been rejected, and even destroyed due to aflatoxins. “At high doses, aflatoxins can kill, while at chronic exposure, they impact human health, suppressing immune systems, hindering child growth, and even causing liver cancer. They are also highly toxic to livestock and poultry”, says The Monitor.

For this reason, most savvy buyers, e.g., the WFP (who is currently the biggest buyer of grains in Africa), have strict guidelines for buying grains like maize and sorghum, and require their grain suppliers to have their own established postharvest handling and cleaning facilities.

 

Earlier this year:

I made a similar appeal to the global Effective Altruism community, asking them for a hand on this grain facility. It just didn’t work. The EA people just let this pass.

Over the years, I have also pleaded with the global antipoverty movement (aka the global development sector), asking them to change the way the world ends global poverty, in particular, by putting the world’s ultra poor (i.e., those of us at the very bottom of the pyramid) in the global south, directly at the helm of ending extreme poverty, and by moving away from top-down approaches.

It all just hasn’t worked. Sadly, supporting bottom-up approaches, i.e., poor-people-led, grassroots approaches to ending global poverty, isn’t what humanity thinks.

It is why I have decided to turn to you for a helping hand.

 

How your crypto will help:

The ~16btc that I am asking you the crypto community across the world to help us raise, will be spent on 2 goals:

Goal 1 — installation of the grain facility:  $814,000.

This facility will be installed by British firm Alvan Blanch, at a cost of £339,403 or ~$465,000* (See detailed Quote). Our contact people at Alvan Blanch who put together this Quote are Ivan ErimuJames Shaw and Christabel Blanch.

As indicated in the above quote, though, the £339,403 doesn’t include civil works and sitework, i.e., the actual installation of the facility; all the needed mechanical and electrical installations; wiring materials; crane and forklift hire; personnel lifting equipment and its hire, etc.

The only thing covered in the £339,403 is plant equipment from Alvan Blanch; CFR Mombasa (i.e., transportation of equipment from Alvan Blanch’s premises in the UK to Mombasa Kenya), and an engineer from Alvan Blanch to oversee the installation at our project site in Kamuli.

This money also doesn’t include the building/warehouse that will house the grain facility, and other needed support structures. Most importantly, Alvan Blanch said it will be our responsibility to clear taxes in Mombasa or Kampala (if they quoted us CFR Kampala), and to ferry the plant equipment from Mombasa or Kampala to Kamuli.

With installation, Alvan Blanch has said they can provide their own skilled installation team at a cost of £50,000 – £67,000 (or $68,627 – $92,000). This money also includes all the needed mechanical/electrical materials, but excludes crane and forklift hire; as well as personnel lifting equipment. This brings the total project cost to $557,000.

We have also spoken with one of the leading warehouse construction firms in Kampala, and a steel fabricated warehouse 15m wide, 50m long, and 9m high (the size recommended by Alvan Blanch) will cost Ugx 380m (or $106,442) excluding VAT (18%). Together with VAT, and all the needed groundwork/preparations, the warehouse will cost ~$150,000. This brings the total cost to $707,000.

Lastly, Alvan Blanch has also said that CFR Kampala (where Alvan Blanch itself carries the plant equipment from the UK directly to Kampala, rather than Mombasa), will cost an additional GBP 27,000 or $37,000 — and has said that, with taxes (on plant equipment in Uganda), there is no clear estimate of how much we will pay (or not pay). So, we will just have set aside another $50,000 both for taxes and hire of a crane, forklift & personnel lifting equipment. This is what brings the total project cost to $814,000.

(*GBP to USD conversions are based on local forex rates).

2) Goal 2 — 12% for 100% ADMIN self-sufficiency:

That’s, multiplying production on the UCF’s own 12 acre premises using irrigation and a little bit of permaculture, to ensure that 100% of our administrative overheads are covered by the UCF itself. Needed funding: $101,968.

Running our work is very demanding in terms of administrative costs. Currently, all the money that we use to run our work comes from small online donations. And as said earlier, most of this money is spent on inputs (seed, tarpaulins, pesticides, fertilizers, spray pumps etc) that the UCF provides to all our target farmers totally free, only as a hand-up. But the day-to-day costs of running this work are huge. And now, with our new goal of expanding our sorghum project to cover every village in Kamuli & Buyende, our overheads will be even higher.

The UCF is located on 12 acres, and our goal right now is to put every available space on this land to maximum use, using a combination of irrigation and permaculture approaches, to ensure that 100% of our overheads are covered by us, i.e., from the income on our 12 acres. See.

Total cost for both Goal 1 and 2 above: $915,968 (~16btc).

(Note: I created this website in 2024 when the price of bitcoin was $57k, that is how I got 16btc. Since the price has now gone up, any extra money we keep will instead be used to support our underlying work with rural poor farmers — providing initial inputs, technical training etc).

 

Plant ownership:

The grain facility that I am asking you to to help us install, is only part of what will ultimately be an integrated plant.

Since the main challenge that keeps every farmer in our region in chronic poverty is the absence of reliable markets for our produce, my ultimate goal — as said in my message to the global effective altruism community (above) — is to develop an INTEGRATED agro-processing plant that shall create market linkages for at least six (6) different types of crops, and thus enable the rural poor in our region to diversify their incomes and escape poverty.

Once installed, our integrated plant will be 80% owned by the rural poor farmers who will be growing the crops that this plant will be working on, with the other 20% owned by the UCF itself — as a way of sustaining our underlying work of training and supporting more rural poor farmers.

Before our integrated plant is installed, however, our grain facility alone, being small, will be owned by the UCF (this will change once our integrated plant is fully developed).

 

Help us find the 16btc now:

BTC  (network: Bitcoin):   3BqtsGXDs49XzwmeT91L3uTCW4kjB5rqcn

ETH (net: Ethereum):   0xb91fedacbed4170eebc0af44b8389d93eb309f44

SOL (net: Solana):  9x6wmYknfB1iuqZaBQnnPsxkrzhL1z57J16jvdDsAQtB

CELO (network: Celo):   0xb91fedacbed4170eebc0af44b8389d93eb309f44

USDT (network: TRC20):  TBnop4ZCcHLK2BUDsRPy6bL9Bd6EPg6Y44

USDT (network: ERC20):  0xb91fedacbed4170eebc0af44b8389d93eb309f44

XRP (Ripple,  Tag: 6254285):  rUzWJkXyEtT8ekSSxkBYPqCvHpngcy6Fks

LTC (network: Litecoin):  MBEGoZYZxX7WZJv32prqRBjrR4pq2LP8p3

POL (network: Polygon):  0xb91fedacbed4170eebc0af44b8389d93eb309f44

USDC (net: Ethereum):  0xb91fedacbed4170eebc0af44b8389d93eb309f44

DOGE (net: Dogecoin):  A6kVGemtoCSH5KzekuyEMhdfcRgwJsfQwp

BNB (net: BNB Chain):  0xb91fedacbed4170eebc0af44b8389d93eb309f44

UNI (net: Ethereum):  0xb91fedacbed4170eebc0af44b8389d93eb309f44

TRX (network: TRON): TBnop4ZCcHLK2BUDsRPy6bL9Bd6EPg6Y44

FET (net: Ethereum):  0xb91fedacbed4170eebc0af44b8389d93eb309f44

WLD (net: Ethereum):  0xb91fedacbed4170eebc0af44b8389d93eb309f44

AAVE (net: Ethereum):  0xb91fedacbed4170eebc0af44b8389d93eb309f44

PEPE (net: Ethereum):  0xb91fedacbed4170eebc0af44b8389d93eb309f44

SHIB (net: Ethereum):  0xb91fedacbed4170eebc0af44b8389d93eb309f44

FLOKI (on BNB Chain): 0xb91fedacbed4170eebc0af44b8389d93eb309f44

BONK (Solana): 9x6wmYknfB1iuqZaBQnnPsxkrzhL1z57J16jvdDsAQtB

BOME (Solana): 9x6wmYknfB1iuqZaBQnnPsxkrzhL1z57J16jvdDsAQtB

LINK/Chainlink (Ethereum): 0xb91fedacbed4170eebc0af44b8389d93eb309f44

DOT (network: Polkadot): 1s1NF3VvRFkrfQxb1e7S3BC6Ndvst1x7Y5rGhScjqhfTC2o

AVAX (network: Avalanche X-Chain):                                                              X-avax1h08nh595g90aqlf6rs0s7jazl6a5t3eys0dx83

APT (network: Aptos):  0x2ba8090798f13ffa592fa1cf4cff2484358e238c65c858bed31b8fc37be7ed20

SUI (network:  SUI):  0x5781491666e498f30e121404b6ba296a8052bd7d72dd2049ac5ca8bc67dfdc51

ADA (network Cardano):  Ae2tdPwUPEZFkV5EvRkofKabSTUJ67cMXZrTidMKgXTDQUcX6H71iMG4q1j

NEAR (network: Near):  126e53c201189315e34261b54c8771beebcd18b8b873372052654cdc00df7e9d

Notcoin/DOGS/TON/HMSTR  (net: TON,  memo/comment: 10609198): EQD5vcDeRhwaLgAvralVC7sJXI-fc2aNcMUXqcx-BQ-OWnOZ

XLM (network: Stellar,  Tag: 6075173): GBGII2C7M4TOEC2MVAZYG3TRFM3ATCCEWANSN4Q3AHEX3NRKXJCVZDEV

NEIRO (First Neiro on Ethereum. network: Ethereum): 0xb91fedacbed4170eebc0af44b8389d93eb309f44

 

Conclusion:

By affording me the means to install the intended grain facility, you will have enabled me to create an unlikely solution, by an unlikely creator — myself, someone who has battled hunger and ultra-poverty most of my life — in an unlikely part of the world: Uganda’s poorest region.

It is partly the reason I want our intended plant to be 80% owned by the rural poor farmers across our region who will be growing the crops that this plant will working on. Running this plant as a traditional capitalist endeavor means I’ll have forgotten who I am, and I’ll have forgotten the primary setup of the community to which I belong.

 

Also:

Only you, the people of crypto/web3, can afford me this.

Putting aside all other factors (e.g. the tech divide) that have kept the rural poor in a place like ours in chronic poverty, humanity’s own establishment systems — traditional philanthropy, the traditional monetary system, the global development sector (aka the global antipoverty movement) — have historically kept people like us on the sidelines of the global fight against poverty, and are the main reason people like us are where we are today.

For example, the processing plant alone for which I am now seeking help from you, the people of crypto/web3, I began raising support for this plant 8 years ago. In 2017, I made this presentation before the UNDP Uganda Country Director and the UNDP senior team about this, but nope.

In 2016, while running a ginger project where the majority of our farmers (in Kamuli & Buyende) were poor women, I asked UN Women if they could only send us one of their Goodwill Ambassadors, or a storyteller like Brandon Stanton of HONY, to see our work with rural poor women firsthand, then help us develop a processing plant that’d enable us scale our work. UN Women, too, simply said no.

Between those years, I have precisely contacted every person on earth who is anyone, but nope. When I first came up with the idea of the UCF in 2014, I was personally still going hungry, without any food. Even in the very week of September 25 – 27, 2015 when the Global Goals were being launched, I was practically having no food, but I was paying close attention to what was happening in the world, and my goal was to ensure that, come 2030, things shouldn’t really be the same. Except it hasn’t worked.

But the little that I have read about crypto/web3 thus far, is that you, the people of crypto, believe decentralized systems like web3 are the ultimate way of ensuring all humans have the sovereignty, freedom and independence that all other systems have long failed to bring. It is one of the things that have motivated me to write to you.

Let’s make crypto a force that can accomplish what other traditional systems have long failed to accomplish.

P.S:- if you would like to help us raise support for this plant via non-crypto means, you can do so by chipping in to this campaign. You can also support us via employee workplace giving (where you can make a donation that will be matched by your employer), or by making a wire transfer. In both cases, please use the info on this page.

Thank you,

Anthony Kalulu

Founder, UCF.

Email | Website