KadAfrica: Girls Agro Investment (GAIN) Project

Creating sustainable incomes for young women through passion fruit farming
2014 SEED Africa Award; European Union
Sustainable Agriculture
Kampala
Uganda

Trainees are given a free plot of land to develop their own passion fruit farming business on for two and a half years. They are offered agricultural training, inputs, and courses in entrepreneurship, financial literacy, and life skills. Supported by the enterprise, the young women then involve their communities in co-operative passion fruit farming. 

The enterprise purchases the passion fruit produced by the trainees at fair market value, with each girl earning approximately USD 30 - 80 per month. It also creates wider social cohesion for their communities, who are able to learn from the girls and replicate their agricultural successes with organic passion fruit farming.

Eco-Inclusive Impacts
The Project provides job security for rural young women, creates wider social cohesion for their communities, who are able to learn from the girls and replicate their agricultural successes with organic passion fruit farming.
  • Reducing the effects of urban drift by helping to sustain rural communities previously prone to economic dependency.
  • Increasing community cohesion through co-operative farming practices.
  • Creating jobs for girls in areas of western Uganda, who have limited job opportunities.
  • Contributing to decreasing the environmental effects of urbanisation by helping to grow rural economies.
  • Teaching girls sustainable farming techniques, such as organic fertilisation and pest control, tiered intercropping and water conservation through drip irrigation systems made from recycled plastic bottles.
  • Helping girls to earn more than a subsistence living, by giving them the ability to grow successful agricultural businesses that maximise land use.
  • Setting GAIN girls up to earn approximately USD 30-80 per month for the duration of their time on the project.

Partners

Girls Agro Investment, implemented by KadAfrica, trains young rural women to manage and run smallholder agricultural businesses in passion fruit farming. The girls are given rent-free land and training for two and a half years, during which KadAfrica buys back their produce. Empowering the girls to continue farming at the end of their internship, the enterprise offers an economic alternative to rural exodus in Western Uganda. 

KadAfrica produces and sells passion fruit and hot peppers. The company, which started in 2008, founded GAIN and continues to be involved with the project’s management.

Catholic Relief Services (CRS) provides curriculum-based training in gender empowerment, financial literacy, and entrepreneurship to the GAIN girls. It also helps the girls to organise savings and pool resources for their agri-businesses.

DSSD Caritas Fort Portal acts as the link between CRS, KadAfrica, and the Catholic Church, helping to secure contracts with parish priests. Caritas also manages 12 field facilitators trained as agricultural extension workers who work with the girls.

The Archdiocese of Fort Portal makes land available throughout six parishes in Kyenjojo District, Western Uganda. This land, divided into three-acre plots, is provided rent-free to the girls for two and a half years.