This project aims to enhance food security in Uganda, aligning with the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 1 and 2, focusing on "No Poverty" and "Zero Hunger." The key objectives include digitizing and commercializing smallholder farmers, improving their market access, ensuring product quality through traceability, and boosting household incomes. The approach involves the development of a user-friendly mobile application and web platform, eSusFarm®, which enables farmers to input, access, and share crucial agricultural data. The platform collaborates with various entities to improve decision-making and efficiency across the agricultural ecosystem.
Results show significant progress, as smallholder farmers gain access to markets, with real-time data helping development agencies, researchers, and financial institutions tailor their support. Additionally, eSusFarm®'s quality assurance system has improved product traceability, ensuring consistent high-quality produce. The solution addresses key challenges like market access, data gaps, and quality control, contributing to poverty reduction, food security, and economic development in rural Uganda.
Despite its success, the platform faces limitations such as low adoption due to lack of awareness and varying infrastructure conditions. However, eSusFarm® stands out as an innovative agri-fintech solution, integrating both online and offline tools to monitor farmer behavior and improve agricultural productivity. It introduces real-time data collection to forecast food production, a capability previously unavailable for smallholder farmers.
As urbanization progresses, accessing nutritious and healthy foods has become challenging for households and communities due to the complex nature of food systems and poverty. The Urban Food Hives Initiative (UFH) in Uganda aims to build resilient, nutritious, equitable, and...
The Muni University-Omia Agribusiness Development Group (OADO) partnership operates in the West Nile sub-region of Uganda, an area facing challenges such as land degradation, poor soil health, and climate change. Historically a tobacco-growing region, it now relies on smallholder rainfed...
Apollo Karuga, a recognized Kenyan Food Systems Hero by the UN’s FAO, aimed to address Kenya’s broken food system by developing an affordable, eco-friendly solution for smallholder farmers to preserve food throughout different seasons. Karuga, through his team at Grow...
Agricultural innovations are seen as a key avenue to improve nutrition and health in smallholder farm households. But details of these agriculture-nutrition-health linkages are not yet well understood. While there is a broad literature on the adoption of agricultural technologies,...
The project emerged as a practical example of how digital innovation can be an effective tool to tackle poverty and hunger in rural areas. Governments in the region have adopted digital solutions that directly contribute to advancing SDGs 1 and...
