ChapChap is a Ugandan digital platform that lets people pay for utilities, airtime, and other services through a network of local agents. When it applied for an Innovation Against Poverty (IAP) grant, it operated in a single district with fewer than 1,000 businesses on its platform. Today it serves 22 million monthly customers across 54 districts. ChapChap is one of 39 inclusive businesses supported by the IAP programme.  A long-term learning study conducted by DevLearn, tracked 26 of them, examining what happened two to six years after grant support ended.

Most businesses are still running

Of the 26 businesses assessed, 25 remain operational. Around a third were classified as High Performers, having achieved meaningful growth and attracted further investment. Half maintained viable operations as Steady Sustainers. Around 12% were struggling, and 4% were discontinued. In total, 85% were either growing or holding steady years after grant support ended.

The distribution itself, with a cluster of strong performers, a broad middle of steady operators, and a small tail of underperformance, is broadly consistent with what would be expected from any early-stage portfolio. For inclusive businesses operating in volatile markets with limited access to capital and often serving customer segments that commercial investors consider high risk, that level of continuity is worth noting.

Access to capital followed a similar pattern. Of the 25 continuing businesses, 80% had secured or were in the process of securing additional capital after grant support ended. All nine High Performers have attracted further investment or are actively raising it. The type of capital tracked performance: stronger businesses drew loans and equity, while struggling ones relied primarily on grants.

Growth came in different forms

Among those that grew, the path was rarely the same.

• Scaling geographically: ChapChap expanded across Uganda by deepening its agent network, growing annual revenue from $100,000 to $2 million.
• Scaling production: Tulip Addis Water Filter in Ethiopia grew from 12,000 to 60,000 units per year, building a nationwide distribution network of 84 agents without a single equity raise.
• Deepening the model: Solar Green Energy in Cambodia moved from one solar irrigation site to nine and secured a Euro 370,000 grant from the Dutch Fund for Climate and Development, positioning itself for an anticipated $13 million in further investment.
• Pivoting: Wana Energy Solutions in Uganda shifted from a liquefied gas model that faced adoption challenges to a broader energy portfolio including solar and induction cooking, opening new customer segments in the process.

Scale, though, did not always translate into profit. Several of the strongest performers grew significantly while still working through the path to consistent margins, a reminder that reaching scale and reaching profitability are different milestones. For inclusive businesses, the journey from one to the other is rarely linear.

Business models, not mission statements, kept businesses pro-poor

Inclusive businesses integrate low-income communities across the value chain, as customers, suppliers, employees, or distributors. Most of the businesses assessed retained that focus years after the grant ended. The evidence suggests this endured less because of mission statements than because the business model itself made low-income customers commercially viable to serve. Where commercial and social objectives reinforced each other, the inclusive focus held; Where they did not, it tended to drift.

Businesses that maintained their pro-poor focus were those for whom serving low-income communities was profitable, through innovation, tiered pricing, wide distribution reach, or demand activation. One water filter manufacturer charged more through supermarkets while offering microfinance instalments and free rural delivery to low-income households, making both reach and profitability work together. A food producer applied its lowest rates to refugee schools and NGOs while charging a premium through commercial retail channels.

Where that logic broke down, businesses shifted toward customers who could pay more. The reasons varied: demand from low-income customers had been overestimated, cheaper informal alternatives undercut the offer, or customers perceived the service as something that should be free.

The businesses that adapted were the ones that grew

In markets that are rarely static, the capacity to change direction matters as much as the strength of the original business model. Significant pivots occurred exclusively among High Performers, suggesting that the ability to adapt, often by innovating in product, model, or market, was closely linked to the strongest growth trajectories. Behind that capacity was invariably a strong team, with the judgement and experience to recognise when the model needs to change, and to act on it.

Technical assistance outlasted the grant

Strong teams matter, but they rarely succeed alone. Grant funding was foundational, but across the portfolio businesses consistently credited the non-financial support that came with it as just as decisive.

Technical assistance helped companies formalise operations, build financial systems, and develop growth plans. ChapChap’s founder put it directly: “IAP contributed probably 80% to that growth.” If processes are not right, then there’s a lot of friction that will stop you from that growth. Investment readiness support, including pitch preparation, financial modelling, and investor connections, had effects that lasted well beyond the grant period. The IAP brand itself acted as a credibility signal, opening doors to partnerships and financing that would otherwise have been harder to access.

But this support worked best when matched to where a business actually was in its development. Earlier-stage companies benefited most from technical assistance and mentoring. More mature businesses drew greater value from strategic support and targeted investor introductions than from broader matchmaking. The timing and calibration of non-financial support appears to matter as much as the support itself.

Some businesses began to shape their markets

As businesses grow, they sometimes influence the markets around them. 3 of the 25 operational businesses in the portfolio showed early signs of this.

Tulip Addis’s shift from importing water filters to local assembly in Ethiopia was followed by its partnership with the government on rural outreach, which raised awareness of household water filtration and supported wider adoption. Competitors later entered local manufacturing, suggesting that Tulip Addis’s first-mover activity helped stimulate broader market entry. In Uganda, ChapChap‘s agent-network model became a reference point for other entrepreneurs, particularly youth-led businesses, exploring digital financial services. In Cambodia, East West Seeds strengthened agricultural value chains through farmer training. Better-trained farmers became more capable market participants, which expanded opportunities and generated broader benefits across the agricultural input market, for East West Seeds and for the sector as a whole.

Where market influence occurred, it tended to follow from the same commercial logic that drove growth: companies shaped the markets they had a stake in expanding.

The value of looking back

Most evaluations of grant programmes assess performance at or near the point when funding ends. Looking back years later surfaces findings that would otherwise remain invisible: which businesses grew, which drifted, which adapted, and what made the difference. That kind of evidence is difficult to gather but valuable for anyone designing development programmes that support businesses. It offers a more honest basis for understanding what works, and for refining how future programmes are structured and what they prioritise.

The study’s clearest finding is also its simplest: supporting inclusive businesses to reach the next stage of their development works. Most are still running years later. Several have grown significantly. What seems to matter most is whether companies can evolve over time, and whether they receive the right support at the right moments along the way.

In November 2026, IAP will publish a Learning Brief drawing on the findings of this study, with a focus on the lessons and implications for funders and business-support programmes seeking to strengthen inclusive business development.

Designing good technical assistance (TA) starts with a deceptively simple question: what does this company actually need? Getting to a real answer takes more than a checklist and more than a conversation. It takes time in the field, and a willingness to revisit assumptions as the work unfolds.

TA is often treated as a generic add-on to grant funding, a line item rather than the distinct piece of work it actually is. In the Innovations Against Poverty (IAP) programme, TA is practical advisory support, hands-on work alongside companies to solve real business problems, strengthen their inclusive business model, and support their growth. A stronger business is a more investable one.

This post focuses on how IAP designs TA, what implementation is teaching us, and why this matters for the inclusive businesses the programme supports.

Starting with a shared picture of company needs

The first step is a structured self-assessment. Each grantee reflects on its business model, governance, financial systems, inclusion approach, and readiness for future investment, supported by simple self-assessment tools covering each of these areas. Companies are encouraged to involve both leadership and operational staff, so that the strategic view and the day-to-day reality are captured together. The assessment gives companies a structured way to think through their own gaps, and is a starting point for the conversations that follow with the IAP team.

The IAP team then reviews the assessment, and together with the company builds an initial TA plan. It sets out the priorities agreed on at the outset and shapes the early advisory support. This plan is not treated as fixed. It is a working hypothesis, accurate enough to begin with, but expected to evolve as TA needs become clearer and change over time.

Real needs become visible in practice

Once implementation starts, the picture sharpens. Site visits, work alongside teams, and implementation reviews bring new things into view. Some gaps surface as implementation gets underway, with priorities looking different in practice than they did on paper. Others come to light only once the company and the IAP team are working closely together.

Governance is the clearest example. Only a handful of companies flagged it in their initial self-assessments, yet working alongside teams showed that most would benefit from support strengthening internal controls, role clarity, and documentation. Impact assessment and M&E followed a similar pattern, barely surfacing at the outset but emerging as a common gap once data systems were tested in practice. Marketing and innovation priorities were broadly confirmed, but field work sharpened them into specific needs around pricing, distribution, and customer insight.

As these things come into view, TA plans are updated. New needs are added, some original priorities are reframed, and others are sequenced differently. Real needs become visible through close, field-grounded engagement, and good TA design has to be set up to absorb what that engagement reveals.

Three streams of support, matched to what each company needs

Rather than offering a fixed package of services, IAP delivers advisory support through three streams.

SNV provides the foundational advisory support to all companies through IAP staff time. Bopinc, IAP’s partner, delivers advisory on inclusive innovation and marketing to a targeted group of companies. Local Business Development Service (BDS) providers are brought in where specialist technical, organisational, or compliance support is needed.

The right mix for each company is set through its TA plan, shaped around its needs. Most support is tailored to the individual company, because business models and contexts differ widely. IAP also runs group sessions on topics that apply to many companies at once, such as financial management, HR or governance.

What this is teaching us

Four observations stand out from the first year of implementation.

1. Trust is the condition for honest diagnosis. The self-assessment happens before contracting, when companies are still being assessed and have little incentive to draw attention to their own gaps. Once a working relationship is in place, the conversations become more candid, and gaps that had stayed below the surface come into view. That takes time, and it works better when advisory is positioned as partnership rather than one-off support.
2. Keep the TA flexible: the first plan is not the final one. Because real needs surface as companies move through implementation, the support has to be able to adapt: adding new priorities, reframing others, and resequencing as the picture changes. Building that flexibility in from the outset is what allows TA to stay relevant as a company grows.
3. TA builds confidence, not just capability. Companies have grown not only in what they do, but in how they make decisions and engage with investors. This dimension is hard to capture in milestone reports, but it shows up clearly in conversations with company leadership. As one company put it, IAP support gave them the courage and confidence to develop and launch a new product.
4. Foundations first: governance and systems shape what comes next. Even technically strong companies tend to absorb advisory more slowly when governance, role clarity, and internal documentation are still being built. Working on those foundations early is often what allows the more specialist support that follows to take hold.

What good TA design is built for

What TA does for a company tends to show up only later, once the grant has ended and the company is on its own. Ingrid van Ginkel, General Manager of HUSK in Cambodia, put it this way:

“As a very small company, you don’t have money to hire the most experienced people. IAP really guided us, helping us build a company properly. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have made it.”

That is the kind of outcome IAP is designing for. Getting there means staying close to companies as they grow and shaping TA around the needs that come to light along the way.

Leng Lun has been watching the same river his whole life. He is 65, a rice farmer in Cambodia’s Kampong Cham province, and from the embankment where he sits, the Tonle Sap stretches a kilometre wide, speckled in both directions with plastic jerry cans in every colour, bobbing on the current, each one marking a fishing net beneath. Behind him, six thick electricity cables run from a concrete embankment down to a pontoon at the water’s edge: the spine of a solar pumping station that delivers irrigation water to rice farming families here, including his own.

For most of his life, his two paddies might as well have been on different planets. The field nearest the river, he always managed to irrigate, but the other was at the mercy of the sky. “Before, I used to worry so much about rain, because everything depended on it,” he says.

“If there was no rain, sometimes we’d wait a whole month, just worrying. Couldn’t sleep at night, just thinking. Couldn’t eat well.”

 

Now he gets two harvests, and that second one is what keeps him farming instead of looking for construction work. “If the price goes to 800 or 900 riel (~$0.21/kg), that would be okay,” he says. “But at 600, I would have to go to be someone’s labourer.”

The pumping station behind him belongs to SOGE. Water is not the only problem. Elsewhere in the country, farmers are rebuilding soil exhausted by decades of chemicals, with biochar from HUSK.

In Cambodia’s farming belt, where rainfall has grown less predictable and 90% of the country’s 2,500 irrigation systems no longer function, and where decades of intensive farming have stripped soils of its fertility, SOGE and HUSK, two local businesses built agri-business models worth scaling. SOGE operates solar-powered pumping stations that deliver water-as-a-service to rice paddies. HUSK turns rice mill waste into biochar-based fertiliser.

But getting a good idea off the ground is one problem. Getting it to scale is another. Between those two stages lies the “missing middle”: enterprises with a working model and customers, but without access to the capital needed to grow.

The difference for SOGE and HUSK, and ultimately for thousands like Leng Lun, was the right support at the right moment. Two SNV-managed programmes – Innovations Against Poverty (IAP)and the Dutch Fund for Climate and Development (DFCD) provided it, sequenced along what we call the impact capital continuum.

The story of two inclusive businesses

SOGE was founded in 2014 by Thida Kheav. Most irrigation pumps in Cambodia run on diesel, but Thida started by selling solar-powered alternatives and, unlike most vendors, stuck around to maintain them. It was not enough. “The farmers don’t trust solar because they have a bad history,” Thida says.

So Thida changed the model: stop selling equipment, start selling water. SOGE would own the stations, farmers would pay per hectare. No equipment to buy, no repairs to manage. If a pump fails at two in the morning, that’s SOGE’s problem.

Innovations Against Poverty (IAP), funded by Sida and managed by SNV, provides early grants and hands-on guidance for enterprises at exactly this stage—the first rung of the continuum. For SOGE, a €200,000 grant—matched euro for euro from Thida’s own savings—funded the first station where the company kept ownership and farmers simply paid for water.

Before this, banks thought the model was strange. She had to drive loan officers to a running station and let them watch farmers open valves and fields fill before they believed it.

”I wanted to do this since 2017,” she said, ”but needed IAP to help finance the cost of the first station.”

Within a year, hectares under the new model more than doubled, from 500 to 1,200.

Every year, Cambodia’s rice mills burn or sell mountains of husks as fuel. Either way, the carbon goes into the atmosphere. HUSK, founded in 2019, found a third option: heating those husks in low-oxygen kilns – a process called pyrolysis—that locks carbon into a porous black material called biochar that holds water and nutrients in soil for centuries.

For HUSK, the IAP grant arrived after COVID, which had nearly finished the company. “There were months that we ended with sixty dollars,” says Ingrid van Ginkel, HUSK’s General Manager. By the time IAP’s money arrived, HUSK had a product and customers but lacked the systems to grow. The grant funded production equipment and put those systems in place. “As a very small company, you don’t have money to hire the most experienced people,” says Ingrid. “IAP really guided us, helping us build a company properly. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have made it.”

Scaling has a way of turning solved problems into new ones

At one of SOGE’s pumping stations, 27 rice farming families share a single branch of piped water. The agreement says five farmers draw water in rotation; in practice, 20 open their valves at once, putting pressure on the system. Sang Sinan, who farms two hectares nearby, kept his old petrol pump as a backup. “I never worried about water because we live by the river,” he says. “Never worried. But now I worry because I depend on someone.” Yet the hours the system saves him allow him to improve his property. He’s frustrated and better off at the same time. Yousoh Lors, a former teacher who manages the station for SOGE, holds scheduling meetings. “But after you leave,” he says, “they go right back to doing it their own way.”

HUSK’s friction is slower and more intimate. Cambodian households carry more than $18 billion in microfinance debt, the highest per capita on Earth, much of it borrowed against the very land they farm. The first season is the hardest sell. Biochar improves soil over time, but yields can dip before they rise—and for farmers carrying that kind of debt, that gap is a gamble. Sut Laim, a 42-year-old vegetable farmer, tried biochar on her cassava and watched her harvest drop 20 percent. “Waste of money,” she says, and laughs. About 30 percent of new customers drop the product before the soil turns the corner. When crop prices fall, farmers treat biochar as a luxury and revert to cheaper chemicals.

HUSK adapted. Their new products blend biochar with conventional inputs, using 30 percent less chemical fertiliser but delivering results from the first season. By year three, Sut Laim’s soil was softer, her yields were up, and she was raising chickens and planning vertical farming racks. “Just be patient,” she says. “The result will come. When I have more income, it inspires me to do more.”

Ingrid compares what’s happening underground to a destination hotel: “Nutrients check in, microorganisms follow, water stays, and before long you have a whole economy underground.”

For those who stay with it, the soil has a long memory. Sen Yon, 55, widowed since 2010, farms five hectares of cashews and vegetables. Her first season using HUSK’s biochar, her cashew harvest brought four million riel. The second: 20 million. The third: 30 million, roughly $7,300. “The leaves started to get very dark, dark green,” she says. “I checked on the skin of the tree. It looks different from the neighbours’.” She calls her cashew trees angels, and she means it literally. “Gives magic to me.”

Navigating the valley of death

A proven model and an investable one are not the same thing—and the distance between them is where many enterprises stall for good.

The Dutch Fund for Climate and Development (DFCD) — a consortium led by FMO, alongside Climate Fund Managers, WWF-NL and SNV — supports this next stage by helping businesses become investable. Once SOGE had stations generating repeat revenue and HUSK was selling into two countries, SNV connected both with DFCD.

SOGE runs 19 stations across 3,000 hectares. DFCD’s €370,000 grant is paying for what stands between that base and a planned $13 million expansion: audited financials, water-use licensing, the work that generates no revenue but that every investor demands before writing a cheque. “Other programmes just give pointers,” Thida says. “DFCD actually brings in consultants and does the work. I don’t know anything about getting investment-ready.”

By 2024, private equity firm Mekong Capital had invested up to €4.4 million in HUSK, attracted by more than 250 farm trials and a product already selling in two markets. The company began exporting biochar-based fertiliser from Cambodia to Vietnam—a point of quiet pride in a country used to the trade flowing almost entirely the other direction. HUSK sequesters roughly 2,800 tonnes of CO₂ each year and expects to double that by end of 2026. “It’s not only about the money,” says Ingrid. “FMO seeing it as a valuable business gives credit to credit providers.”

Back on the embankment, watching the jerry cans bob past, Leng Lun would agree. The water is there. The soil is coming back.  Two businesses made that possible, supported at the right moments to move from idea to scale. For farmers like Leng Lun, that shift is concrete: another harvest, a steadier income, and a reason to stay. For SOGE and HUSK, it is the difference between a model that works and one that grows.

Across low- and middle-income countries, essential goods and services, such as clean water, energy, financial services, and agricultural inputs, remain out of reach for billions of people. An estimated 2.1 billion people still lack safely managed drinking water, 730 million live without electricity, and 1.3 billion adults remain outside the formal financial system. Public budgets cannot close these gaps alone, and conventional private investment rarely reaches the communities that need it most.

Uganda is one example. The national water utility primarily serves urban and peri-urban areas, leaving millions of rural households without reliable access to safe water. A different kind of business is beginning to change this.

In Uganda’s Kasese District, small-holder farmer Alex Tabulenga and his family used to walk almost two kilometres every day to collect water. Today, they have water at home. His wife has time for other work. His children attend school regularly. And he earns an income selling water to his neighbours. “Water has changed our lives,” he says.

Alex and over 410,000 others in the district are participants in a business model that integrates low-income communities into its value chain as active stakeholders—an inclusive business. This explainer unpacks what they are, why they matter, and why they are worth backing.

What is an inclusive business?

The G20 defines inclusive businesses as enterprises that provide goods, services, and livelihoods on a commercially viable basis, either at scale or scalable, to people living at the base of the economic pyramid, making them part of the value chain of companies’ core business as suppliers, distributors, retailers, or customers.

In simpler terms: An inclusive business is a commercially viable enterprise that deliberately integrates low-income communities into its core operations. This is not corporate social responsibility. Inclusion is not an add-on. It is the business model. That distinction matters because it changes what drives performance. An inclusive business succeeds commercially precisely when it serves underserved communities.

A case in point is Irrisol Engineering in Uganda, the company behind Alex Tabulenga’s story. Irrisol Engineering designs and operates solar-powered water systems for rural communities on a pay-as-you-go basis. Since 2017, it has installed 14 community mini-grids and over 330 household systems, reaching more than 410,000 people with 123 million litres of clean water. It is a profitable business, generating $790,000 in revenue in 2024. Serving low-income communities is not a mission alongside commercial operations—it is what makes the business work.

Why are inclusive businesses a smart bet for developing economies?

Inclusive businesses deliver what is often called a “triple win”: benefits for governments, for low-income communities, and for the businesses themselves.

For governments, inclusive businesses address priorities that sit high on every developing economy’s agenda: job creation, income growth, food security, financial inclusion, and climate resilience. They do so through sustained commercial activity. This translates into private sector partners that advance the development agenda at no cost to the public budget. They generate tax revenue, reach communities where the state has limited presence, and build economic activity in regions that conventional investment has long overlooked.

For low-income communities, the benefits are direct and concrete. As suppliers, smallholder farmers gain access to stable markets, inputs, training, and often financing to improve their productivity. As distributors and retailers, local entrepreneurs build sustainable livelihoods by bringing goods and services to their communities. As customers, low-income households gain access to essential goods and services—clean water, energy, financial services, agricultural inputs—that meet their needs, support their wellbeing, and help grow their incomes.

For businesses, the base of the economic pyramid represents substantial economic opportunity. The 4 billion people living on less than $8 per day represent a $5 trillion market. Inclusive businesses tap into this market by overcoming barriers that have kept it underserved. They often discover new customer bases, build loyal relationships, and create competitive advantages through deep market knowledge. Financial returns come from improved productivity, stable supply chains, and the goods and services they provide.

An example in a different context is Wuchi Wami, a Zambian honey company that sources from smallholder beekeepers across the country’s northern forests. It illustrates this triple win: the company promotes forest conservation and rural employment (government win), provides 2,500+ smallholder farmers with a reliable income from sustainable beekeeping (community win), and has secured international certifications and export markets in Norway, Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe (business win).

If these businesses are commercially viable, why do they need external support?

The answer lies in their position in the capital market. Many inclusive businesses fall into what is known as the “missing middle”: too large and complex for microfinance, but too small and risky for commercial banks and institutional investors.

This is where development finance plays a catalytic role. A relatively modest grant or concessional investment, combined with investment intermediation support, can help an inclusive business prove its model, build its track record, and de-risk its operations to the point where commercial lenders and investors are willing to engage.

The Innovations Against Poverty programme has provided €6.3 million in grants to inclusive businesses, which mobilised an additional €44.67 million in follow-on investment (debt and equity). Every euro of catalytic finance unlocked approximately €7.10 in additional capital. Development finance does not replace the market here. It creates the conditions for the market to function.

The case for backing inclusive businesses

The strongest argument for investing in inclusive businesses is not what they achieve today, but what they sustain tomorrow.

Once an inclusive business reaches scale, it keeps generating jobs, income, and access to services. The model is self-reinforcing: a stronger business means more suppliers with reliable income, more employees with transferable skills, more customers with access to essential goods, and more economic activity embedded in the local economy.

For those navigating a rapidly changing development landscape, this distinction matters. For donors, that means continuing to invest in catalytic instruments that reach the missing middle. For governments, it means creating the policy and partnership conditions in which inclusive businesses can grow. For investors, it means engaging earlier, and alongside catalytic capital, where the commercial case is strong.

Development finance works best when it catalyses economic activity that continues independently of the funding itself. Inclusive businesses are not a channel for delivering development outcomes. They are a mechanism for sustaining them.

The journey of Nutridense began as Alem started her studies in chemistry. There were no courses to study food at the university and she thought that chemistry at the very least came something close. After graduating, and working with an international governmental organization, she got the opportunity to explore her first passion. “I was studying animal feed and at the same I was analysing milk, which was really my interest: food.” A scholarship to Germany furthered her journey into food and nutrition. “I got to see real food being produced. Produced for everyone. In factories.”

Returning to Ethiopia, she quickly realised she had little opportunity to open a food processing plant when another opportunity found her. “I opened the newspaper and began reading about malnutrition in Ethiopia. I thought ‘Malnutrition? Where?’ I’d never worked outside of Addis.” Alem decided she had to help and headed south. “It was green, it was nice. Like here.” And gestures, around her own obviously well-tended garden, studded with banana palms and passion fruit trees. “Malnutrition was killing a lot of children. This was because there were coffee plantations that were not doing well. The leaves had started to rot. So, the first affected were the children. Their fathers were not working, and they suffered.”

“As I looked around the camp, I kept thinking about how to feed them. I knew from Germany that oats were simple to grow, they were cheap and nutritious.” Oats may not be part of Ethiopian agriculture but Alem kept asking herself. “Where are these oats? You can grow them simply. You can feed your children with them.” Alem approached the IGO she worked with and said why not teach them to grow oats? It’s grass roots development, and they will be able to feed themselves and children. She was met with a firm ‘This is not our mandate. We only do emergency relief’. Alem, understandably, says “I was not happy with that reply.” Then waves it off, and with a sardonic smile, shrugs and simply adds. “Well, that’s another topic.”

Despite this experience, Alem extended her 6-month contract, and it would be 11 years before she thought ‘Enough is enough’ and resigned. Behind this was a desire to show that Ethiopians could do something for themselves and not simply be the recipients of food aid. A crisis in Yemen briefly interrupted her plans. Again, in Yemen, she faced the same problems. “I thought, okay I’ll back to Ethiopia and work on something more sustainable.”

Now she could start her company, Nutridense. An agro-processing business that would go on to be the first to produce oats for the low-income market. In a country that imports some $6 million in breakfast cereals each year, it certainly could not be said that there was no market. However, with her experience of famine, Alem was ardent that any product produced must be affordable and primarily involve smallholder farmers who would benefit from a guaranteed market, improved income and secure employment.

Indeed, oats have such a high nutritional value that, along with research showing them to be helpful in combating certain diseases, oat-based food products like breads, biscuits, probiotic drinks, breakfast cereals, flakes and infant food are fast gaining in popularity around the world.

Once back in Ethiopia, Alem began her research. “We didn’t have oats in Ethiopia, we had Emmer wheat. When I asked about growing oats, the answer was a simple, ‘no’.” Yet, oats grows well in the cool and moist climate of much of Ethiopia and Alem saw that much of the Ethiopian population, where 80% are farmers, would be able to grow it and feed their families and children.

Working with the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research, Alem met some Americans who had brought high quality seeds from Morocco. With these institutes behind her she was now able to begin to first multiply then distribute seeds, to farmers.

The farmers approved. Now came the difficult stage of trying to expand her new business, Alem approached banks for loans, but, as she explains. “There’s nothing. When you start a business in Ethiopia, you have to fight for yourself. There really is no help. Even if you apply for microfinance, you have to be part of a group of at least 10 or 15 people.” It was then that she heard of Innovations Against Poverty. She applied and was selected as a recipient of a grant. Initially, Alem had purchased solar powered equipment through a European company. Unfortunately, this fell through. And with the supplier filing for bankruptcy, so did any chance of a repayment of her outlay. This left her still producing 100 kilograms a week from her basement. With IAPs help she managed to see this climb to over 300 kilograms. “Still, it’s not complete. IAP know what happened and they are helping fill this gap.”

Although frustrated by the hurdles she has faced, Alem remains unexpectedly positive. And she certainly is resolute in her faith in the size of the market in Ethiopia and, she hopes, across the region. The difficulties she has faced may well have slowed the scaling of her business but the IAP support has at least allowed her to retain the staff she needs and to order new equipment from Germany. “If it weren’t for the grant, I would have stayed producing a 100 kilograms a week. The money just wouldn’t be there. Nothing would happen.”

On the potential benefits of challenge funds for other entrepreneurs in Ethiopia, Alem simply nods. A little resigned she explains. “Challenge in Ethiopia is normal, it’s just impossible. Whenever you see, especially youngsters, that want to start something and just need a small amount of money, it’s impossible. They are forgotten.“ Continuing she says that if the government can support large businesses, they really must consider smaller businesses.

She explains the impact Nutridense is having. “I would say two reasons, first at the farmers’ level. They are feeding their children and then the income generation for the farmers. Then there are those with no land. We bring the produce to the shops so they can access it. It has a holistic advantage for the country too. Everyone can afford it. It’s good for the national economy. Now we don’t need to import using foreign currency, which, again is very important, because it makes products very expensive. That would make it only for the elite. All in all, I really believe we are helping.”

One doesn’t need to rely simply on Alem’s enthusiasm for Nutridense’s impact. As of this year, the company was able to engage more than 400 smallholders as suppliers of oats and test the market for the product with the low-income customer base. Once the company acquires its new equipment, Nutridense’s reach may truly astonish.

When Sarah Basemera at the Raising Gabdho Foundation (RGF) discusses obtaining funding for her idea for a renewable energy project that would both benefit Ugandans and refugees, she laughs. “We got seed funding it was about $3000.” This $3000 was going to solve Uganda’s energy issues and employ a team of 30 people. “We picked charcoal briquettes. Everyone uses charcoal. So how could we bring a product to market that they already knew how to use?” Uganda is a country that relies heavily on charcoal, especially for cooking and heating, with estimates suggesting that anywhere from 85% to over 90% of households use it for cooking. With this in mind, RGF initially decided to help people produce biomass briquette alternatives themselves. For a number of reasons this just did not work. Less than a year after, RGF decided they would start producing the briquettes themselves. “Now we just needed to work out how to operate as a business and make the briquettes affordable and accessible for people.”

Six years and an IAP grant later, Sarah describes how they have grown. “We make four different types of briquettes, and we have an office, something we’d never had before.” she exclaims. “Now we have a factory that we are currently completing.” The factory is operational and although much of the carbonisation of farm waste and sawdust was done in furnaces, today a new carboniser is in place and assembled and tested, promising to make the process a whole lot cleaner.

Many were wary of RGF’s retail business model, and it did take some working out. “First, we sold majorly to a large scale poultry farm which collapsed during COVID. We then went to the markets and just sold to everybody. Then one day we woke up and we had a list of 300 people who owed us very small amounts of money. It was just too much. You set up a meeting to call 300 people just to follow up their $5 or $3? It just wasn’t working.” Again, RGF had to come up with a new sales model.

The agent model they created sees one main agent in each market, a single point of contact. What is more these are exclusively women who are better able to work with the many other female market vendors. In Nakawa market in Kampala, they now only have one woman that they invoice and collect cash from. That same woman also manages the market’s other distributors. Owning their own business in the market, the agent already has good contacts in the market predominantly among female vendors and can build strong relationships with them. The agent is supported by an RGF employee who comes in regularly and checks stock levels, making sure that vendors and kitchen users have adequate supplies. Purchases by these individual briquette and stove vendors and the sales to the numerous small kitchens that dot the north side of the market see RGF now making a profit.

RGF have been using vendor agents for five months. They have been integral to supporting the 108 distributors across Kampala’s markets and also in RGF’s bid to find new clients. “We have about five restaurants who are constant users of our products, and other users are coming up.” Looking at the potential for growth to illustrate, Sarah says, “Each market has about five hundred vendors. What would it be like if five hundred vendors, each of them, just bought a kilo or two daily?” To scale, RGF are using whatever means they come across in their retail approach. In “Pushing” their retail strategy Sarah explains that, “The markets have their own community radios. So, we’re testing some adverts that fit. The onsite stalls are also cheap. We really are getting to a place where we feel comfortable with the retail side of things.”

RGF also produce cookstoves. Once more they started out with independent stove producers, but they proved unreliable. Now they make their own. “Our top of the line model is being certified. Now we’re working on the communication and packaging, to make sure we release it to the market and our distribution network at the right time.” RGF are hoping that the certification and the trust they have built in their briquettes will add to the confidence of the final users. “We’re also looking to extend our product line. We’re thinking of producing special barbecue briquettes. Then we can make aromatic briquettes, the ones that that add flavour to your meat, like we have seen in other countries.”

Alongside the modernisation of their carbonisation of biowaste and expansion of their product line, other changes are coming. The confidence they have built among their customer base is paralleled by their own, internal confidence. “Our team is strong. In the past we had one person who had to run all of this, but today I can confidently send any team member out to a meeting. Our finance is getting strong, our systems are much better.” This confidence is leading them to take the next step: digitisation.

“We are digitising our sales point. We have an app: (www.zeedenergy.green). Agents weren’t really buying through it at first but people were visiting.” This is changing things for RGF and their customers. Sarah says that the app is giving legitimacy to their products. “People visit, they see a picture of the product and they know it is there.” As they expand, without the digitisation of sales, RGF would face the uphill battle of simply physically reaching all of their customers. Sarah says. “We can’t be everywhere because of the retail costs, but by having the digital platform we are everywhere. It makes it easier for people to say, ‘send me your product catalogue, send me your price list’. It is much easier than sending the same piece of paper one after the other. We just drop them the link with the catalogue on top. It helps a lot.”

It is still early days for RGF. Market vendors do not purchase through the app yet. “For them this product is new. It’s just like ‘It’s okay’, but once they see those numbers, that things are happening and that the product is moving, they will be ready to be onboarded. Then they can just punch in an order.” explains Sarah. That the Ugandan market is not quite ready for digital apps is echoed by other businesses across Uganda, but RGF have taken the important step of convincing their consumers to pay online. “This was the first digital moment for them. They would say, ‘Come and get your money’ but we said no. This got them paying online using mobile money.” says Sarah. An issue with all online transactions in Uganda is the charges and taxes that come with online transactions. Although small, this is often a deterrent for the agents that make the payments. RGF have found a bank that can integrate several mobile money providers for a lower cost. For the bank, being able to link themselves to environmentalism and women is certainly why they are interested. In a country where charcoal alone accounts for more than eight times the country’s total CO2 emissions, this is a pivotal step for RGF, certainly for the banking sector and indeed Uganda’s credibility as the first African nation to to commit to the UNFCCC’s REDD+ guidelines.