What is the name of your organization?
Nampya Farmers Market
What is the name of your solution?
A post-harvest chain platform
Provide a one-line summary or tagline for your solution.
Nampya operates an integrated post-harvest chain platform that allows rural smallholder farmers to store, manage and monetize their produce
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Kampala, Uganda
In what country is your solution team headquartered?
UGA
What type of organization is your solution team?
For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?
In most of the western world, the agricultural supply chain is intricately connected and integrated from farm to table, but the situation is quite different in Uganda and many African countries. The mostly smallholder farmers suffer a significant gap in connectedness and infrastructure and as a result, they lose over 1.3 billion tons of produce a year to post-harvest spoilage. Add climate change to this scenario, the problems multiply because food spoilage process is often quickly expedited, forcing farmers to sell what they quickly can – and at huge discounts – or risk their produce rotting, keeping them trapped in a poverty cycle.
In addition, urban dwellers in Uganda also find it hard to access quality, safe and fresh food due to massive distribution delays and poor handling by third parties, leading to massive food waste - the cost of which is borne by end consumers who are paying high price points (often 200% on average) for food that's hardly fresh from retailers. Ironically, both producers and consumers are food insecure
What is your solution?
Nampya Farmers Market is building an integrated post-harvest chain platform that allows rural farmers to store, manage and monetize their produce through solar-powered micro-warehouses and a USSD-enabled food trading platform with the aim of ending poverty among farmers. We do provide solar-powered micro-warehouses near farm clusters, making it easier and more affordable for smallholder farmers to store and insure their surplus harvest. We also run a USSD-based, tech-enabled food supply platform that connects rural farmers directly to urban food retailers, bypassing exploitative middlemen. This allows farmers to sell their produce at fair prices, promoting economic self-sufficiency and supporting sustainable food supply chains. With mobile money payments integrated into our system, Nampya facilitates smooth, direct transactions, helping greengrocers, hotels, and restaurants source better-quality, competitively-priced food straight from the farmgate to their doorstep.
Find a sneak preview of our services here https://youtu.be/ZvZXYHuIN38
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
Smallholder farmers are the backbone of food production across Africa, providing up to 80% of the continent’s food supply. Yet these farmers struggle to fully capitalize on their yields and labor. With over 120kg of food lost per capita in Sub-Saharan Africa annually, lack of storage and transparent market linkages squander immense nutritional and economic potential.
Nampya Farmers Market provides climate-smart solutions tailored to overcome the interlinked challenges holding smallholder farmers back. Our solar-powered micro-warehouses allow farmers to safely store more of their harvest while our integrated USSD and tech-enabled food trading platform connects them to stable markets and fair prices.
Using a USSD platform, farmers are able to efficiently and transparently store and trade their produce. By solar cooling, safely storing, and selling at optimal prices, farmers using Nampya’s micro-warehouses have increased incomes by up to 90% while avoiding storage losses.
Thus, as Nampya rapidly scales up storage units across Central Uganda and beyond, we can exponentially increase impact. Just reaching 1% of Ugandan smallholders would impact 300,000 livelihoods directly. With robust measurement frameworks in place, quantified income improvements and post-harvest loss reduction for each additional farmer will clearly showcase our value chain approach to lifting smallholders out of poverty cycles.