What we do is not just a business: it is a catalyst for positive change in agriculture, aiming at creating a bountiful and environmentally friendly farming experience for every farmer that we work with.”
Paul Mugisha, CEO and Founder, Agape Innovations Ltd
Location: Kampala, Uganda
Founding year: 2019
Number of employees: 2–10
Website: Home - Agape Innovations
Revenue: USD 30,000 (2022)
Investment ask: USD 10,000–50,000
Investment needed to:
- Purchase new equipment, machines and a van for transportation and waste collection
- Expand the company’s production facility
- Set up demonstration plots
- Implement a larger-scale marketing strategy.
Commodities and services:
- Supplying organic fertiliser and animal feed made from organic waste using black soldier flies
- Supplying other organic inputs such as indigenous seeds
- Supplying organic pesticides and pest control
- Providing consultancy services for farmers
- Disseminating information about organic and agroecological farming practices via farmer groups, radio talk shows and the company’s mobile app.
Enterprise portrait
There are many ways to approach challenges. Paul Mugisha decided to view them as an opportunity. Using innovations, science and technology, he built a business around the following challenges: use of chemical fertilisers has decreased soil quality and farmer yields, (young) people struggle to find employment, organic waste from markets goes unused, and quality organic inputs are not available. Conventional farming is expensive in the long term and poor soils result in lower and less nutritious yields, so Agape Innovation’s aim was to improve farmer incomes, support the environment and contribute to building healthy ecosystems. The company wants to make farming profitable and attractive for young people again, thereby creating self-employment opportunities. Agape Innovations now impacts farmers’ and young people’s lives every day.
Key commercial activities
- Organic fertiliser and animal feed production: Agape Innovations works with young people to collect organic waste from markets around Kampala. With the help of black solder fly larvae, it then processes the organic waste into nutritious and affordable organic fertilisers and animal feed. It also trains farmers in using black soldier flies for processing their own organic waste and producing organic fertilisers in order to decrease their input costs and improve their livelihoods.
- Organic input provision and agroecological training: To optimise farmers’ experiences, Agape offers quality indigenous seeds and ecological pest controls, and encourages and trains farmers on organic and agroecological farming practices. Through a focus on soil health, increased biodiversity and reduced reliance on chemical inputs, it aims to help farmers create a balanced ecosystem on their farms and beyond, to increase their resilience to pests and diseases, to reduce soil erosion and to enhance soil fertility. To reach as many farmers as possible and to encourage bottom-up processes and peer-to-peer learning between farmers, it supports farmer groups. Agape has also developed an app and hosts a radio programme to spread information about agroecological and organic farming practices.
- Job creation and youth empowerment: To increase its impact on young people’s lives and open their eyes to opportunities in agricultural activities, Agape also gives them access to black soldier fly larvae to enable them to process their own organic waste and generate additional income.
Amid rising demand, especially for its organic fertiliser, Agape now plans to increase its production capacity and hire more staff. Furthermore, it wants to set up demonstration farms to expand its reach and train more farmers on agroecological and organic farming practices. In the near future it wants to expand its sales to other countries in East Africa.
Agroecology impact highlights
With its special focus on youth – Agape Innovations’ own team members are also all below 35 years of age – the company not only offers new job and income opportunities to young people but demonstrates the potential for innovation and technology in agriculture, making it more appealing to them. Through a close collaboration with Makerere University, it ensures continuous innovation and a focus on science-based agriculture.
Agape’s farmer-centric, bottom-up model encourages knowledge exchange between peers, empowers farmer groups and makes it easier to access knowledge about organic and agroecological farming. By keeping its products affordable and high quality, it supports farmers in their efforts to invest in healthy soils and high yields, become more resilient and depend less on costly chemical inputs.
Fair and sustainable seed systems are core to healthy and equitable food systems. Agape Innovations plays a key role by strengthening the availability of indigenous seeds, leading to wider availability of quality indigenous crops and thereby indirectly facilitating access to healthy indigenous foods.
By focusing on the local market, supporting Ugandan farmers and re-valuing organic waste, it generates value for communities and improves the circularity of Uganda’s food system. Furthermore, to improve market access for smallholder farmers and encourage transition to more equitable and sustainable food systems, Agape Innovations also participates in policy formulation and engages with global movements such as Catalyst 2030.
Current challenges
The business environment for organic input providers is, due to regulations on organic fertilisers, not always easy. In particular, registration and certification fees for organic fertilisers are very high, which prevents Agape Innovations from being able to easily sell to large NGOs or other big organisations.
Another challenge is the difficulty of competing with large chemical input providers, which have much larger marketing budgets and therefore reach. However, amid globally rising fertiliser prices, Agape Innovations’ focus on efficient and affordable organic fertilisers and local value generation is starting to pay off.
Accessing suitable finance, including for its smaller producer partners, is also a major challenge that has hindered Agape’s ability to invest in better machines, transportation and waste collection, and therefore hampered the company’ growth.
Financing track record
Agape Innovations has so far mainly been financed through personal finance from family and friends. It has also reinvested profits in the business.
Last year, Agape was a member of the Neycha Accelerator & Fund’s first cohort. Neycha supports food systems innovators that work towards creating more agroecological food systems and contributing to more holistic and circular food economies in East Africa. As part of the programme, Agape Innovations receives capacity building on business and agroecology, access to networks and eventually a loan of between USD 10,000 and USD 50,000. This investment will allow it to increase its production, improve efficiency and sustainability through the use of better machines, hire more people and invest in additional product research. This will benefit farmers and their soils and have a long-term positive impact on the environment.