Safi Fudz

Smallholder farmers face many challenges that include lack of access to credit, high transaction costs, high post-harvest loses, unpredictable prices for their produce, and these challenges are even greater for women farmers, who constitute the majority of farmers globally. Over 20% percent of food produce distributed to markets remains unsold and rots, since vendors cannot forecast a day’s orders and so buy in excess.

Safi Fudz seeks to improve the livelihoods of farmers and vendors at both ends of the value chain by matching supply with demand while contributing to waste reduction as well as lowering food prices in towns with the leveraging of technology to aggregate the requirements of the food retailers and efficiently sourcing produce directly from farmers through m-commerce platform.

500 million smallholder farmers in the world would benefit in having a guaranteed market, transparent pricing, farming advice, resources and access to credit from Safi Fudz’s partner.

Smallholder farmers face many challenges that include lack of access to credit, high transaction costs, high post-harvest loses, unpredictable prices for their produce, and these challenges are even greater for women farmers, who constitute the majority of farmers globally. Over 20% percent of food produce distributed to markets remains unsold and rots, since vendors cannot forecast a day’s orders and so buy in excess. Ultimately, it is customers who cover the costs and during the last decade, this inefficiency has contributed to price increases of up to 900 percent for certain staples.

Smallholder farmers, who represent the majority of farmers in developing world, lose much of the value of their crop when they sell it to middleman traders who bring it to market.

Young smallholder farmers face a number of challenges while trying to access markets, even beyond the constraints faced by smallholder farmers in general.  Moreover, before accessing markets, these young smallholder farmers have already faced numerous constraints to starting their farming activities, including difficulties accessing land, agricultural inputs and financial services. Furthermore, young smallholder farmers in the context of the present procurement systems that requires large, steady supplies and favouring larger farmers over small-scale producers.

Safi Fudz intends to revolutionize the food supply chain in Uganda and make quality food cheaper in Uganda’s towns. The major solution is to formalize the supply chain and get rid of the uncertainty that drives up food costs in Uganda. Our approach model is to buy produce from a network of farmers and deliver it to thousands of informal vendors in urban centers. 

We will operate a mobile-based, cashless-platform that will aggregate urban retail demand by offering thousands of small and medium-sized vendors convenient one-stop shop ordering. The Ugandan retailers will for the first time have access to lower-cost, higher-quality fresh produce in time, moreover conveniently and reliably delivered to their doorstep within 24 hours of ordering. More importantly the current frustrated farmers will now be able to have guaranteed access to a fairly priced and transparent marketplace.

Therefore Safi Fudz will improve the livelihoods of the many farmers as well as that of urban vendors at both ends of the value chain and most importantly this will contribute to waste reduction and lower food prices in urban centers.

By leveraging on technology to aggregate the requirements of the informal retailers and efficiently sourcing produce directly from farmers through m-commerce platform. With this creation of a more transparent and efficient supply chain, delivering the product directly to the retailers and reducing post-harvest losses on fresh produce would enable farmers to have an easier and more predictable access to market, thus enabling them to increase their revenues; while retailers using the m-Commerce platform to easily order high-quality food products which would be delivered directly at their shops would save vendors time and transport costs and safety while end-customers would for the first time get access to higher quality and safer and fresher food at cheaper prices. Our approach answers a massive market need: the structuration and formalization of the food logistics supply chain.

Farmers are anticipated to benefit in having a guaranteed market, transparent pricing, farming advice, resources and access to credit from Safi Fudz’s partners, this will as well attract youth back into farming since it will be an encouraging moment.

We would be able to contribute to reduction of post-harvest losses of produce from current 35%-100% to 7% for produce brought to market on our network.