Africa: Ugandan company develops solution for urban agriculture
Lilian Nakigozi, founder of Women Smiles Uganda, a company that manufactures and sells vertical farms used to grow crops in areas where there is limited space.
How We Made In Africa
Feb 6, 2021
Excerpt:
Women Smiles Uganda is a social enterprise formed out of passion and personal experience. I grew up with a single mother and eight siblings in Katanga, one of the biggest slums in Kampala, Uganda. I experienced hunger and poverty where we lived. There was no land for us to grow crops and we didn’t have money to buy food. Life was hard; we would often go to sleep on empty stomachs and our baby sister starved to death.
Growing up like that, I pledged to use my knowledge and skills to come up with an idea that could solve hunger and, at the same time, improve people’s livelihoods, particularly women and young girls living in the urban slums. In 2017, while studying business at Makerere University, I had the idea of developing a vertical farm. This came amid so many challenges: a lack of finance and moral support. I would use the money provided to me for lunch as a government student to save for the initial capital of my venture.
I managed to accumulate $300 and used this to buy materials to manufacture the first 20 vertical farms. I gave these to 20 families and, in 2018, we fully started operations in different urban slums.
