Entrepreneurship Training
While the Ugandan economy has enjoyed more than two decades of solid growth and expansion, the benefits have not been equally shared: significant gender-based disparities persist in the business world. TechnoServe is running an entrepreneurship program called “Women Mean Business.” It is designed to equip high-potential female entrepreneurs with the skills, information, and financial and market links they need to start and grow successful businesses in sectors such as agriculture, trade, services, transportation and education. It will also develop a pool of women mentors and coaches who can go on to help more women succeed.

Agriculture & Agribusiness › Horticulture
A high urbanization rate, combined with a rapidly increasing number of tourists and an emerging middle class, are driving up the demand for fresh food in Uganda's cities. But inefficiencies in the fruit and vegetable supply chains lead to frequent shortages, and wholesalers resort to selling imported produce instead of domestically cultivated produce. To remedy this, TechnoServe is organizing more than 1,000 small-scale farmers and helping to improve the quality of their produce. We are helping them find new market opportunities for traditional fruits and helping them diversify to more lucrative produce such as cauliflower, tomatoes, Irish potatoes and pineapple. We are also helping small- and medium-sized companies to service the increasingly sophisticated markets and establish long-term linkages with institutional customers such as hotels, supermarkets, and educational institutions.

Agriculture & Agribusiness › Other
Matooke (green bananas) are Uganda's most important food staple, but farmers’ income opportunities have been constrained by high transport costs, poor product handling and poor market coordination, among other factors. TechnoServe has been working with the Uganda President’s Initiative on Poverty Alleviation to make this industry more efficient and beneficial to the rural poor. We are working with 9,000 matooke farmers (organized in groups that are being transformed into marketing companies) and linking them to urban wholesalers. Uganda is also one of the world’s largest cotton producers, but farmers’ yields and incomes are low, because the farms are not run as efficient businesses. TechnoServe is also developing a model for a competitive cotton industry, integrating key stakeholders—including farmers, gins and service providers—in a rotational crop strategy. Some 6,000 organic and 500 conventional cotton farmers are benefiting from business training, market links and agronomic advice. We also work with ginneries to improve productivity and profitability.
Key supporter: Rockefeller Foundation