The green banana known as matooke is a staple of Ugandan life. But its popularity was not translating into much money in the pockets of the men and women who grow it. "We were getting so little money... that some of us wanted to do other things altogether," says farmer Rwakisana Johnson.

To remedy this situation, TechnoServe is developing a more efficient and competitive matooke industry, with an eye to benefiting small rural producers and driving economic growth. The program — funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and carried out in partnership with the country's Presidential Initiative Against Hunger and Poverty— builds on a successful pilot program with bananas in Kenya.

A cornerstone in this effort has been organizing small-scale farmers into producer business groups so they can pool their matooke for sale to urban buyers. TechnoServe business advisors are also teaching them skills such as grading the quality of their fruit, negotiating with buyers, selecting markets, and maintaining sales records and bank accounts.

TechnoServe has also linked farmers with a micro-finance lender and government agriculture advisors, to give them the resources and skills to improve their production. We have also linked them with large wholesalers, giving the farmers steady customers and also giving the buyers a steady supply of quality fruit that they can sell to higher-paying markets, to everyone's benefit.

In 2006, the 2,500 farmers already organized into producer groups earned 70 percent more than they would have otherwise. With the added income, farmers such as Johnson have been able to send their children to school and buy farm equipment and dairy cows — a source of household nutrition as well as organic fertilizer.

To further bolster the industry, TechnoServe business advisors are training government employees to spread this successful model, and helping Makerere University to develop a Food Business Innovations Center. The center will nurture small and medium food-processing businesses that would create even higher-paying markets for matooke, among other staple crops.

In the program's next phase, TechnoServe and its partners plan to leverage this early success to help thousands more matooke farmers such as Johnson sell to better markets.

"We now have a bright future and I have stopped thinking about the bad old days," Johnson says.

(Story updated 2007)