Covering all of Busoga:

Our region Busoga is Uganda’s poorest, and has long been the subject of laughter. Even back in 2016 when Karamoja was still considered the poorest SUB-REGION in Uganda (before Busoga overtook it), the New Vision, Uganda’s national newspaper, called Busoga “the poverty capital of Uganda”. For this reason, our ultimate goal is to work with rural poor smallholder farmers across Busoga as a whole.

The grain facility that I have described earlier, however, is of a small capacity, and will only work with rural farmers in our 2 twin districts of Kamuli & Buyende, only on grains. With 1,123 villages, and a total area of 3,300 sq km, Kamuli & Buyende are only a tiny part of Busoga.

If you could help us raise a sufficient amount of coins, we will instead develop a first-of-its-kind plant that will work with rural farmers in every village of Busoga, Uganda’s most impoverished region that stretches 10,318 sq km — the size of the west African country Gambia — with over 6,000 villages, 800,000+ households, and ~4m people.

The world currently spends billions of global antipoverty dollars every year, in a way that doesn’t touch the ultra poor in a place like ours in any way. If you are one of those people who believe in bottom-up approaches (i.e., poor people-led approaches) to ending global poverty, then, giving people like us (who have directly battled hunger & chronic poverty for decades) the means to take charge of events in our region — by enabling us to develop a more sound plant that will work with rural farmers in every part of Busoga — is the most invaluable thing you can do.

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

 

What is needed:

To cover every village in Busoga, while effectively putting the rural poor on a self-sustainable path from poverty…

all that we need is a) to install a fully-fledged integrated agro-processing plant that shall create markets for various types of crops, enabling rural farmers to diversify their incomes, and b) providing all our target farmers with initial inputs for 1- 4 planting seasons (depending on the type of crop they are growing). As said earlier, this plant will be 80% owned by all the farmers across Busoga who will be growing the crops that this plant will be handling.

This plant will have 4 components: a) a grain facility, working on crops like sorghum, maize, millet, rice, beans; peas, and rice, b) a cassava starch/tapioca facility, producing cassava starch, c) a facility for making High Quality Cassava Flour, and d) a fruit facility, working on mangoes, pineapples, oranges, passion fruits etc, and making purees/concentrates and finished juice.

These four components will create market linkages for over 11 crops (sorghum, maize, millet, beans; peas, rice, cassava, mangoes, pineapples, oranges, passion fruits), enabling the rural poor in our region to diversify their incomes and escape extreme poverty.

Because our goal at this level is to reach famers in every part of Busoga, we want each of the above 4 components to be able to consume particular types of crops from farmers across Busoga as a whole. For example, we want the grain facility alone, at this level, to be able to handle all the grains from farmers across Busoga’s 11 districts. We want the cassava facility alone, at this level, to be able to consume all the cassava produced by farmers in Busoga, and the fruit facility to consume all of Busoga’s fruits.

 

Impact:

Our region Busoga as a whole is currently known for only one thing: sugarcane, because sugarcane is the only crop that has a relatively ready market. Busoga is also currently the biggest sugarcane producing region in Uganda.

The most immediate result has been threefold: 1) increased hunger (as mentioned here and here), because every household is growing sugarcane, yet sugarcane can’t be eaten as food 2). increased poverty, because sugarcane takes two years to mature and 3) even when the sugarcane finally matures, there are times when prices fall to the extent that a farmer literally earns nothing, because every farmer is growing the same crop.

Our INTEGRATED plant, once installed, will not only help place the rural poor in our region on a self-sustainable path from  poverty — by creating market linkages for various crops, minimizing postharvest food losses, and creating new jobs — but also, since all the crops that this plant will be getting local farmers to grow on a large scale (cassava, sorghum, maize, mangoes, pineapples, passion fruits etc) are food crops, this plant will contribute greatly to food security across Busoga, undoing sugarcane’s ills.

 

Needed support (in coins):

Recently, a Ugandan entrepreneur named Ham, who happens to be one of Uganda’s privileged few, used $120m of his own money to install an integrated agro-processing plant exactly like the one we want, but in a part of Uganda where poverty isn’t like in Busoga. And being a traditional capitalist venture, Ham’s project also doesn’t provide his target farmers with direct support.

In our case, we need an integrated plant that is capable of consuming all the produce from farmers across Busoga, and given local people’s circumstances in our region, our project will also be required to provide each of our target farmers with initial inputs (only as a hand-up), in a region the size of Gambia. These inputs will include grain seed, fruit saplings, tarpaulins, fertilizers and pesticides etc, but each new farmer will only receive them for 1 – 4 planting seasons, depending on the type of crop they are growing.

In total, we need 2,200btc ($200m) to cover all of Busoga.

 

Breakdown of the 2,200btc:

  • Farmer support: $9m.

    We will provide fruit saplings (mango, oranges, passion fruits, and pineapple suckers) to farmers allover Busoga, in addition to grain seed like sorghum. Some farmers can’t afford these inputs on their own. But putting this aside, supplying these planting materials to farmers is also intended to ensure that all farmers are growing the right crop varieties (e.g. the right fruit species for juice production), lest their produce is rejected at harvest.

  • A cereal/grain sorting, grading and threshing system that is capable of handling all the grains in Busoga, in addition to crops like beans, peas, rice etc — complete with at least ten (10) silos of 3,000 – 5,000 tons: $12m.

  • A cassava starch/tapioca facility of 200t/hr, complete with its own silos & other support structures — enough to handle all the cassava from farmers in Busoga: $15m

  • A High Quality Cassava Flour facility of 200ton/hr, with its own silos and other support structures: $9m

  • A fruit processing facility of about 3,025 ton/hour (or 26.5 metric tons per year), equivalent to the Benfruit plant in Nigeria — capable of handling all the fruits from farmers across Busoga: $130m

  • Working capital (to run our initial operations): $25m.

  • Green energy, i.e., a 500 kW – 1,000 kW solar system (This will only supplement Mains electricity, and will help with the frequent load shedding in Uganda, and also cut our carbon emissions by at least 25%): $600k

 

Conclusion:

All other parts of Uganda are known for large plantations of everything from coffee to tea, but our region Busoga isn’t known for any, except sugarcane, a crop that has only exacerbated hunger and poverty due to monoculture.

If I raise 2,200btc, my goal is to ensure that, by the time I exit this planet, every part of Busoga, a region the size of Gambia, is covered w/ big plantations of mango; oranges, passion fruits, pineapples, sorghum, cassava, and others.

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