From Waste To Sustainability.

We solve multiple problems as detailed below;

Waste management is a major problem in Uganda. In the capital Kampala, only 40% of the waste generated is collected responsibly, leaving the rest to end up in streams and the roadside where it presents a disease outbreak challenge.

Secondly, 70% of our soils are depleted through the use of chemical fertilizers and this has affected the livelihoods of millions of farmers. Our solution helps to take affordable fertilizer back to the farmers. Additionally, a lot of nutrient loss happens at harvest time and our work helps to return these nutrients back to the farms instead of ending up in the landfill.

When organic waste goes to the landfill, it rots and the effluent ends up in underground water sources. The biggest landfill in Uganda (Kiteezi), reached its limit about 10 years ago so it has no capacity to safely process organic waste that ends up there. We believe that the best way to address this problem is to ensure that organic waste doesn't end up there.

The high cost of agro-inputs in Uganda further affects many farmers and some of them have been forced out of farming. They struggle with availability, high cost and quality of inputs such as feed and fertilizers.  Our solution delivers affordable, high quality inputs and with collaborations with farmers' groups, we improve accessibility.

Lastly, the demand for fresh fruits and vegetables is a big income substitution for the country. However, exporters and their clients in Europe prefer organic products, and therefore our organic fertilizers help to address this by ensuring that less chemical fertilizers are used by our farmers. 

Alternative protein offers an opportunity to conserve our lake resources which are finite. To try to solve the problem of overfishing the government deployed the army on our lakes. Some of the over-fished species is silverfish which is an important ingredient in poultry and animal feeds. However, the army solution is not tenable with our rising population and the attendant need for protein (chicken and pork). Our alternative protein offers a solution to these demands by substituting fishmeal in animal and poultry feds. 

We collect organic waste from municipal markets, pulp and ferment it for at least two weeks, then we feed it to Black Soldier Fly larvae. This results into two wonderful products that include; alternative protein (larvae), and frass (fertilizer). We sell the alternative protein to poultry farmers and feeds makers, and the fertilizer is improved and turned into Bokashi which offers both fast and slow nutrient release properties that help to improve the soil biology and crop yields. 

We use a truck to collect the waste from the markets and the additional technologies we use in our operations include; a grinder (to mill the waste), fermentation drums (biological-based technology to break down the waste), and a separator to assist in harvesting the products. We employ a team of workers (unskilled) to perform the different processes. These are people who wouldn't qualify for jobs and this system helps us to offer clean green jobs to those who would otherwise struggle to earn a decent living. We focus on employing young women and youth. 

We are implementing an inclusive and sustainable product delivery model that involves smallholder farmer cooperatives and Rural Producer Organizations as distribution agents for our product. We do a geotag of our network of demonstrations, farmers, cooperatives and agents using the Digital Agricultural Suite (DAS), a one stop agricultural digital marketplace that also links farmers to other productive assets along the Agricultural value chains including markets. We currently have 8,850 active users of our product across 3 regions of Uganda. We are received very good feedback from coffee farmers, a tea estate, vegetable farmers and maize farmers that our solution does not only amend the soil but also increase yields between 60% to 90% depending on the type of crop.  

Our solution serves smallholder farmers that struggle with three major problems; poor access to affordable inputs, poor quality inputs, and high cost of those inputs. We deliver a sustainable solution that is high quality and accessible through working with cooperatives. This helps smallholder farmers to earn from their activities through improved yields as well as earn higher incomes through selling organic products to food exporters.  

We serve animal and poultry with affordable and high quality alternative protein. In comparison, a kilogram of lake fishmeal is currently costing $2, while a kilogram of our dry larvae costs $1.1. This offers a more sustainable solution that also serves to protect the finite lake resources. With the increasing population and their demand for protein, our solution offers a sustainable source which will keep many of them in business. 

Our Senior Management and operations Team has a collective experience of over 25 years working with smallholder farmers and other last mile related initiatives. 

Achilles Kiwanuka as the CEO holds a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Management, a Master’s in Public Health, a Certificate in Project Planning and Management, Certificate in Leadership. He has 11 years of experience in Capacity building, strategic design and implementation, communication and reporting, management and planning, leading teams in a start-up. He also has extensive experience working with communities on life-improvement projects with USAD, including program design and implementation, community engagement, education, monitoring and evaluation. Until recently he has been the CEO of Milkweed Biologicals; a company that specializes in customized bio-control and integrated pest management (IPM) solutions for the floriculture and agriculture sector.

John Mark Muwangala as the MD is a highly qualified and experienced professional, currently pursuing an MBA in Impact Entrepreneurship. He has a diverse skillset that includes strategic leadership, financial services, business development, and sales, as well as over 10 years of experience in banking, sales, and development finance with a focus on small holder farmers and SMEs. He is well-suited to implementing a B2B business model for selling organic fertilizers to small holder farmers in Uganda. Additionally, John Mark gained valuable experience as a financial services specialist implementing The Cooperative League of the United States of America-CLUSA Uganda implemented three-year program in northern Uganda. The program increased food security by increasing agricultural productivity of maize and beans (including soybeans) through the introduction of Conservation Farming (CF) cropping practices into smallholder farming systems with funding from the United States Department of Agriculture, to reach 60,000 direct beneficiaries.  

Advisors / freelance Consulting Team

Bram Jacobs is a Belgian national with a Master of Science in Biology, and extensive experience in the development sector, including serving as an Agroecology Advisor for Broederlijk Delen in Uganda, where he helped to close the knowledge gap in climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction, and the implementation of agroecology; Bram also has experience as a Science Teacher at the Holy Sepulchre Institute in Turnhout, Belgium, and is a committed and flexible individual who loves teamwork and personal growth, and enjoys nature, adventure, culture, and the arts.

William Zimwe is an inclusive marketing channel developer with 13 years of experience designing sustainable and impactful solutions for smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. He is a certified agricultural land use and management professional, practicing soil scientist, and project development and implementation strategic manager. Zimwe is currently the Strategy & Business Lead at ZAZA & Wilhelm Limited, a last-mile-centered consultancy and project implementation firm. He is also the lead consultant for program design and implementation and product lead of the Digital Agricultural Services at GNUGRID, a last-mile energy and financial inclusion solutions provider. Zimwe has previously held roles such as regional business manager and area business coordinator at USAID/Uganda Feed the Future Commodity Production and Marketing Activity.

We are at the growth stage as we have served over 10,000 customers with the fertilizers. These have been through collaborations with partners such as USAID aiming to reach as many smallholder farmers as possible with affordable agro-inputs )fertilizer). With the alternative protein, the demand is huge and most of our product has gone to a few high-demand clients (poultry farmers). With system and production improvements, we will start producing our own feed, but at the moment, we are comfortable serving millers and big poultry farms with dry BSF larvae.

We would like assistance with technology to improve our output and impact. The challenge we are addressing requires that we improve our systems to a level that is efficient, effective and easy to adjust to the constant demands of our clients. This will allow us to go beyond our current customer and operation base (in-country), and go regional. This requires efficient an easily replicable systems and technologies.

We will also require assistance with improving our engagements with stakeholders and other players in the field. This will enable us to attract more funding and technical assistance as well as open doors to more markets, especially in Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo. 

Our approach is to use waste as a valuable resource for improved agricultural production and income for smallholder farmers. In a country that generates a lot of organic waste, we feel that our work and approach opens the minds of the broader community to see waste in a completely different way; not as a nuisance and public health hazard, but as a valuable resource that is important for sustainability and production. 

With providing and establishing more green jobs and sustenance, we know that the broader community can learn how best to engage in the protecting the environment and its natural resources.

Additionally, our work will attract more people to engage in recycling organic waste and further spread the benefits and impact that we are already seeing. At the moment, the players in this field are a drop in the ocean considering the organic waste challenges that we face as a country at large and we believe that our work will spur other players to join the industry.

Our work helps smallholder farmers to increase their agricultural production while ensuring healthy soils; which are key to survival in an agrarian economy. By providing affordable, high quality agro-inputs, we solve key challenges for them (high costs and poor quality inputs) which have kept many of them in a cycle of unproductive work and therefore poor standards of living.

In addition to the above, Ugandan are engaged in exporting vegetables and fruits to the Western world, which limits the use of chemicals in farms. By providing organic fertilizer, we help the export sector (much of the produce is sourced from smallholder farmers), through ensuring limited use of chemical fertilizer. This ensures that exporters are paid for  the high quality food they export, thereby improving the balance of trade for the country, while ensuring that the smallholder farmer is also paid more.

Through providing affordable alternative protein, we support smallholder poultry and animal keepers to stay in business and improve their output and income. Uganda's rapidly increasing population means more demand for protein and by supporting smallholder keepers to stay in business, we ensure that this demand is met. This also reduces reliance on fishmeal which is a finite resource and is not sustainable to support the protein needs of the growing population. A lot of poultry and pig farmers have been pushed out of the business because of the high cost of fishmeal and providing a cheaper alternative helps to bridge the gap and keep them in business, while improving their incomes.

Agriculture productivity. Smallholder farmers using organic fertilizer and improving their productivity. Currently, we measure this through the number of farmers that have been reached and/or are using our fertilizer in their gardens to improve their yields. We also measure this through the tonnes of fertilizer that are sold per month through our different channels and partners.

Clean jobs and employment. We measure this through the number of people that gain employment along our processes . These include permanent and semi permanent staff, sorters, production assistants, farmers, extension workers and agronomists. 

Waste management. We measure this through recording the waste collected and processed every month by our operations.

Alternative protein. We measure this impact by looking at the number of tonnes of alternative protein sold (which could have been fishmeal). For every tonne of alternative protein produced, we know that we have saved a tonne of fishmeal from going to poultry feeds instead of being consumed by human beings.

Green jobs and meaningful employment. We measure this through assessing the number of people employed along our processes.

Environmental protection. We measure this through looking at how much waste is processed by our operation, waste which could have ended up in the municipal landfills and/or on roadside or open garbage pits. Every tonne of waste processed, is a tonne removed from the environment.

Our solution replicates already existing technology that is powered by nature. We mimic the environment through using insects to process organic waste on a larger scale. The Black soldier flies already exist in the environment and we provide conditions or them to do their natural biological function. Ours is a largely nature based system.

Additionally, we also use simple technology to drive processes such milling/pulping the fresh waste as well as separation of the two products using a separator/harvester. 

We have 7 Full time staff (which includes the CEO, sales agronomist, production manager and production assistants).

8 Part time staff (which include the finance department, Human resource as well as casual labor that is available on call depending on the tasks at hand).

The founders have been been working on the solution since 2020 (4 years), and increasingly as we have grown through the years, we have taken on more people. The organization has the same number of years working on the solution as it is the reason it exists.

Most of the current team has worked on the solution for the 2 years.

Apart from the two founders, (both male), our team is very diverse and includes different backgrounds, religion and tribe. We have a zero-discrimination policy against anyone for employment and engagement. Our focus is that our solution works for all as we all face these challenges as individuals, communities and regions. However, we have been focusing on employing more youth and disadvantaged young mothers (single mothers) who would otherwise have challenges finding decent employment and respectable income.