ClikOffice: Managing Agribusinesses

Problem: Youth unemployment is a growing challenge and a threat to socio-economic stability, hence causing the rise of poverty in Uganda. It is complex for youth farmers to network, access finance, information and mentoring.

Solution: ClikOffice enables collective farmers to create virtual offices in order to easily access support networks, inputs, self-coaching modules, links to new and existing markets, manage and monitor their savings together. It has an intelligent data processing and visualization module that uses machine learning technology to know the behaviors of different products in different markets, hence identify the ones that are most marketable.

How are we changing the world? With ClikOffice, we are unlocking the potential of farmers to promote entrepreneurship globally through cloud, machine learning and information technologies. They will remotely manage their businesses, savings and connect together with various support networks to promote their businesses for social-economic transformation, leading towards a poverty free world.

In Uganda, more than 75% of the population is below the age of 35, with the country having youth unemployment rates at 6.5% and 13.3% in Sub-Saharan Africa. Research shows that youth unemployment is a growing challenge and a threat to socio-economic stability, hence causing the rise of poverty in Uganda. 

If entrepreneurship is greatly promoted among the youth, decent work will be created for them both as means of self-development and as job creation for others. Research shows that 5.8% of the Ugandan youth are entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, as the number of farmer entrepreneurs rises, it is complex for them to network, access finance, information and mentoring. These four pillars are critical in the modern-day entrepreneurship. The impact of COVID-19 pandemic has also caused complexity for farmers; to train and share information with extension workers or fellow farmers, to access agricultural inputs, financial support, market for their produce, to monitor their transactions and savings because a number of them are rudimentary keeping money in boxes in their homes.

With the current growth of cloud ecosystems, machine learning and IT connectivity, farmers urgently need to embody the virtual world in order to develop and be financially inclusive.

ClikOffice product has the following components:

1. Virtual office (group) registration: Enabling a farmer to create a virtual office in the platform and then invite other farmers to join the group.
2. Connectivity: Connecting farmers with each other and support networks so that they can share business information and build trusting, respectful relationships through effective communication.
3. Mentoring: Access to self-coaching modules such as videos, cartoons and text tutorials in order to acquire knowledge to improve productivity.
4. Virtual product catalogs: group farmers can create virtual product catalogs for e-commerce.
5. Funding opportunities: farmers can connect to various donors/funders globally for financial support.
6. Business management: group farmers virtually manage their business transactions for cost-benefit analysis.
7. Links to markets: farmers access new and existing markets
8. Data processing and visualization: uses machine learning and dynamic reporting tools to know the behaviors of different products in market, hence identify those that are most marketable. Enables informed decision-making in production.
9. Financial Inclusion: group farmers can manage and monitor their transactions and savings together. Thus, the rudimentary way of keeping money in boxes and in people’s homes is replaced with a more secure, reliable and easy way.

ClikOffice serves youth farmers, extension workers, customers, donors and suppliers of agricultural inputs. The platform has grown to 400 farmers in Uganda and 8 extension workers. Farmers can apply for grants from donors/funders globally, share information among themselves and discuss about issues that affect them. They access improved inputs, mentorship, and support networks to improve productivity, hence they are self-employed and have created more than 100 jobs for others. Farmers are financially inclusive through managing their savings together for socio-economic transformation, contributing to the end of poverty. Extension workers use the platform to provide advice to farmers, respond to their queries. Customers can order for products in the catalog.

We conducted four participatory design sessions on different days in different farmers’ communities. Sixteen (16) participants were randomly selected among farmers and divided into four groups (four participants each) in which we (researchers) acted as the facilitators for each group. Participatory Design (PD) enabled the farmers to become part of the design team as well as the test team to test the usability of the ClikOffice platform. Using simple interviews, we asked them to think about their normal day-to-day operations in their agribusinesses in order to identify the user requirements.

With our tech-driven platform, over 1 million youth farmers are predicted to have created virtual offices to manage their small and new businesses and savings together, to access agricultural inputs, funds, support networks, self-coaching materials and more links to markets globally by the end of year 2021. In so doing, they will be employing themselves, and more productive to prosper. They will also be creating good jobs for others, hence solving the challenge of youth unemployment, which has been causing the rise of poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in Uganda.

We provide a tech-driven solution to youth farmers in low-income communities to create virtual offices and manage their agribusinesses, access self-coaching materials, connect to each other, support networks and extension workers. By leveraging cloud computing, machine learning technology and dynamic reporting tools, farmers can learn the product behaviors in the market and identify those that are most marketable, and hence increase productivity accordingly. The rudimentary way of keeping money in boxes and in people’s homes is replaced with a more secure, reliable, easy and digital financial inclusion way. Youth in refugee camps and women groups can use the platform.

Our solution runs in the cloud environment and it was developed using the latest web 2.0 technologies, especially bootstrap technologies and dynamic reporting tool. It also uses machine learning technology to learn the product behaviors in the market and identify those that are most marketable for informed decision-making in production. 

Since our platform was implemented with bootstrap technologies, it is responsive and thus it can run in all sizable devices including mobile smart phones, iPads and personal computers (check on https://clikoffice.com/). Data can be visualized graphically with the dynamic reporting tool and the most marketable products can easily be identified by machine learning technology.

Youth farmers in Uganda face a depressed local economy and very high levels of youth unemployment. Some young people are particularly disadvantaged in making a transition from school to work because of histories of trauma and disengagement from school.

Our ClikOffice platform will help youth farmers to achieve their potential by creating virtual offices on the platform to grow their agribusinesses, hence creating good jobs for themselves and others. The platform will help young people to find meaningful long-term employment through providing mentoring, support, marketplace to easily reach their customers, tailored virtual self-coaching resources to increase their skills and features managing their transactions and savings together which will support them to deal with the issues affecting their lives.

In our business road map, we started with inviting local youth farmers in our community in Uganda, who will continue to invite or refer their fellow farmers in the whole country Uganda, then East African Region, Sub-Saharan Africa and the whole world. This will enable the network of entrepreneurs or farms using our platform grow. Thus, we will be able to achieve our goal of acquiring revenue while promoting entrepreneurship and creating good jobs for the youth. We work with participants to increase their knowledge and skills, and then they work directly with intended beneficiaries. We also get research outputs and use this research to inform and improve our business.

The success of this service is dependent on the program engaging and maintaining the support of extension workers as mentors, customers, local businesses and young entrepreneurs continuing to receive support from the Government and donors.

We are serving over 400 farmers and we project to have more than one million farmers within one year and more than 4 million in five years.

1) Grow to impact at least 1 million youth farmers with small and new agribusinesses, especially those owned and managed by women in low-income, minority, immigrant populations in Uganda and beyond 

2) Networking: the platform will enable more extension workers, donors, input suppliers and customers to register and support the youth farmers in various specific ways.

3) Product and technology: Fully upgrade and scale the current prototype version of the VirtualOffice platform to accommodate other more categories of entrepreneurs. This will create more good jobs for the youth.

4) Content: Establish content for different categories of entrepreneurs such that those of a given category can customize the service by optimizing information or education materials  of their preference.

Our 5year vision is to unlock the potential of 5 million youth farmers in Uganda and more globally, to improve their agribusinesses through using our platform. We plan to do this through 1) growing the number of our institutional partnerships including the government, community groups and other agribusinesses. 2) activating farmers and extension workers communities across different geographies and 3) increasing awareness and advertisement through social media platforms and local media. 

In the next one year, the impact of COVID-19 pandemic is making rate of adopting the platform by the youth farmers might be low because we are in a lockdown. In the next five years, we might require much more means to advertise, scale and make users aware of the platform globally so as to get more farmer users globally.

To overcome our barriers, we will promote our platform via social media platforms and local media channels so that more farmers can get to know and use it.

5 full-time staff, 2 part-time staff, 1 contractor and other 16 workers, especially youth farmers on the design and test teams.

The team understands the project and its complexities. The technical lead to this project has substantial technical abilities and expertise with proven track record in line with academic training and application. We have well-trained technical staff with bachelor’s degrees in related disciplines that fully meet and exceed the technical requirements for this project. We use the latest in knowledge and information management techniques such as GitHub and WhatsApp to keep team members appraised of the on-going tasks and status. We have successfully executed contracts on similar efforts.

Our business model is a hybrid ClikOffice business model, where by each of our new clients (that is; youth farmers) will subscribe for free for the first six months. And then each subscribed member will begin to pay subscription fees of only 5 USD to use some modules in the platform for one year. Thus, each member will be renewing subscription every after one year.

Since the platform has a virtual marketplace, farmers will be allowed to set up an online store that sells products at a set price. This will help them to determine how much profit each product they sell will make. We will thus be gaining revenue from seller for listing of products and commission on the sale of each product. Buyers will need to pay the price for the product only to buy the products on the virtual marketplace. Sellers will be able to list the first 20 items on the ClikOffice marketplace free of charge every month. But after that, we will be charging the listing fee depending upon the product category. We will also charge commission fee on each sale of products. 

Our business plan forecasts financial sustainability in the fifth year of operations, mainly by charging farmers a modest subscription fee for the use of certain key functions in the ClikOffice modules. Corporate Social Marketing programmes and consulting services will be big contributors, too, where we will offer tailored project matchmaking services and consumer reporting tools. These tools will enable stakeholders to cost-effectively manage innovative new campaigns that engage their entrepreneurs in direct funding of small-scale agribusiness projects, on a large scale.

For now, we have to be financed by a combination of grants and soft loans. Our aim is to secure all funding necessary to bridge the coming years.

We are eager to join the solve peer network with other entrepreneurs doing similar work to learn and support each other. We also desire for financial support. We also desire to link to other partners internationally so that we can be able to easily scale our business. Thus, we need to be exposed and we believe Solve can promote us.

To further scale and promote the ClikOffice platform to the ends of the world to create a great impact in creating good lobs for youth farmers and entrepreneurs as whole.

With the Adan Prize, we will be able to unlock the potential of refugee farmers to promote their agribusinesses globally by promoting  and scaling the ClikOffice platform to many more women groups globally. Thus, they will be able to use it and be impacted socio-economically and create good jobs for themselves as a way of self development and for other people, especially their fellow women. This will promote gender equality and contribute towards poverty eradication among refugees.

ClikOffice will enable collective refugee farmers to create virtual offices in order to easily access support networks, inputs, self-coaching modules, links to new and existing markets, manage and monitor their savings together. It will have an intelligent data processing and visualization module that uses machine learning technology to know the behaviors of different products in different markets, hence identify the ones that are most marketable.

With the Women Prize, we will be able to unlock the potential of women farmers to promote their agribusinesses globally by promoting  and scaling the ClikOffice platform to many more women groups globally. Thus, they will be able to use it and be impacted socio-economically and create good jobs for themselves as a way of self development and for other people, especially their fellow women. This will promote gender equality and contribute towards poverty eradication in the world, especially among women.

ClikOffice will enable collective women farmers to create virtual offices in order to easily access support networks, inputs, self-coaching modules, links to new and existing markets, manage and monitor their savings together. It will have an intelligent data processing and visualization module that uses machine learning technology to know the behaviors of different products in different markets, hence identify the ones that are most marketable.

With the GM Prize, we will be able to unlock the potential of all farmers to promote their agribusinesses globally by promoting  and scaling the ClikOffice platform to many more farmers globally. Thus, they will be able to use it and be impacted socio-economically and create good jobs for themselves as a way of self development and for other people. This will contribute towards poverty eradication in the world.

ClikOffice will enable collective farmers to create virtual offices in order to easily access support networks, inputs, self-coaching modules, links to new and existing markets, manage and monitor their savings together. It will have an intelligent data processing and visualization module that uses machine learning technology to know the behaviors of different products in different markets, hence identify the ones that are most marketable.

With the AI Humanity Prize, we will be able to unlock the potential of farmers to promote their agribusinesses globally by promoting  and scaling the ClikOffice platform to many more farmers globally. Thus, they will be able to use the platform's intelligent data processing and visualization module that uses machine learning technology to know the behaviors of different products in different markets, hence identify the ones that are most marketable. Thus, they will have access to good market for their products globally and be impacted socio-economically and create good jobs for themselves as a way of self development and for other people. This will  contribute towards poverty eradication in the world.