5) Description of housing product/service offering: Better household incomes for 10,000 families We are a commercial private limited company cum Rural Social Development and Communications Agency specializing in improving household incomes through linking rural enterprises to National and International Specialty Markets .This includes sustainable organic production such as tropical fruits , Vegetables , spices ,Coffee and Food Grains such as beans ,Maize,Rice etc .We mobilize and work directly with farmers groups with a network of over 10,000 farmers with each group independently micro managed by democratically elected farmers leaders countrywide.we have gauranteed premium prices for their agricultural produce where by the beneficiaries use our product (HGS)Harvest Gaurantee Scheme to improve on their livelihoods. This include better housing,sanitation,Nutrition,food security and Biodiversity.Some of the services are communual and others are at individual household level requirements.The beneficiaries liase with our field officers to apply and are evalueted for the item requested.Currentlty we are implementing a 7,400 rural farmers low-cost houses project which invole 100 houses in each local district of uganda,the average two three bedroom ,1-Sitting and 1- Dining room house constructed by Local hydroform blocks ,steel doors and iron sheets is an enviromentaly friendly house because majority of the construction raw materials are sourced from the construction site.The blocks are made out of loam soil mixed with lime and are interlocking .This cuts the construction cost for an ordinary building by 75%.With introduction of the harvest gaurantee scheme farmers may y not need cash at hand provided they have a big potential to supply produce to a contracted market.farmers are assured of a complete house in 14 working days.Most of the construction materials are localy fabricated by the farmers themselves to enable a revolving system.

6) Description of innovation: we have the following products (HGS) Harvest Gaurantee Scheme This facility enables farmers to access servicess provided by our agency. they register with us free of charge ,train and practice modern farming skills which enables them earn premium prices for their products. Our services mainly involve social rural developement and extension services which register , form , train groups and link them to national and international speciality markets worlwide.we also encourage them to practise value addition such as drying fruits naturally. Our technology for value addition include drying platfoams for fresh fruits ,local pots for boiling vanilla,and local granary for food security storage. For the houses we use a hydropressing machine which produces enviromentaly friendly low-cost bricks which subscidice the farmers expenditures.The houses are made out of loam soil,white lime,corugated iron sheets and local shuttering materials.we encourage all our beneficiaries to improve their livelihood through better houses to avoid tropical diseases such as malaria ,contigious diseases like hooping cough,measals ,flue etc by living in a better hyginic and secure enviroment. Our delivery system is very easy because through our field officers we keep in tourch with the farmers through our monthly meetings cordinated with our field officers. The farmers are doing a pre-financing of 3/4 and we gaurantee them with 1/4 at 0% interest rate to enable them own a house in 14 working days.The balance is spread in 1 year at a farmers friendly scheduled time with no interest fees. this allows a convinient time to enable a revolving system for other beneficiaries.

7) Benefits to clients: First and foremost all our beneficiaries are our farmer members and are on our data base , we keep interacting through our network which enables us pass important information to our farmer members in addition we have democratically elected group executives which headed by the chairman run the day to day activities of a farmers group.we also have buying centre in all our project ares which also work as rural group offices so any vital information can easly get to them through our standard communication or use group sms because all our farmerleaders have mobile pnones where we communicate most instant information

8) Key operational partnerships: we have made two important patnerships with the) Afrofreshfoods europe) fruit buyers in Holand and (Coetze Natural Product Pty S.A ). Vanila and Coffee farmers in South africa this is in addition to individual farming contracts with all our farmer members to gaurantee them premium prices at farm gate during the season. We have farmers contracts with 503 coffee and vanilla farmers,501 organic fruit farmers,2500 arabic coffee farmers and 7,000 rice farmers.our partners range from busines to social the fruit farmers are supported by the dutch gorvernment to train and build an ultra modern fruit processing machine in uganda in addition to a nucleus irrigation farm to help train farmers and earn from sales out the products on the farm.The coffee and vanilla farmers are supported by a swiss funded agency specialising in promoting export of organic products from africa (epopa)this help in funding for mobilisation ,training and identifying sustainable markets for organically certisified farmers from africa.

9) Financial model: We have introduced a product called Harvest Gaurantee Scheme which enables a farmer to apply and be evalueted to own any social improvement such as a house in 14 working days.The farmer may not need to have cash at hand to enable him or her to secure scholastic materials to take back their children to school or any other domestic requirement.what the farmer needs is to undergo an evaluation and make a request for any service or product urgently required at the household level.the same applies to community requirements.

          • Costs as percentage of income: 20%

          • Financing: Building is not our business ,we are just doing this as a baseline indicator to improve the livelihood of the rural farmers . it is self sustaining but because of the little capital involved we can not move faster as we anticipated,the beneficiaries contribute a 75% and pay the balance of 25%in one years time to enable other beneficiaries qualify for the same gaurantees.This kind of hold other applicants who cant get the service unless their colegues clear their oustanding gauranteed facility

10) Effectiveness

          • Project outcomes: we have just started and 5 out 7400 farmers have applied and been approved awaitng costruction.The farmers have to also adress biodiversity issues as part of their obligation by planting atleast 10 fruit trees in compound as part of an enviromental protection and food security their daily incomes.In future it becomes a suppliment income generation in the home

          • Number of clients in past year: we have 10004 fully registerd farmers who have been linked up to potential markets and have improved economically by taking our advices and training as tools of operation.This is our gender balance statistics 45% male adults,25% youth and 40% wome

          • Percentage of clients that are poor or marginalized: 90

          • Potential demand: 100,000 - 500,000 Uganda is a country which relies on agriculture as a number one export from coffee , fish ,cocoa ,vanilla etc all the economic base in in agriculture so there is huge potential to spread he project to all parts of the country leading to the above figures.

11) Scaling up strategy

          • Stage of the initiative: Start Up stage.

          • Expansion plan: we expect to expand to 74 districts of Uganda with a rationale of 100 houses in each district of uganda for the first two years but we are likely to open up the number above 100 houseds in each district because of varying population density in differnt area so our potential is big and we will expand country wide

12) Origin of the initiative: The initiative started after a survey carried out by Mathias Nabutele and he discovered that majority of the rural farmers admire a better housing but cant afford due to lack of gaurantees for housing finance in Banks and high interest rates this prompted him to create better markets and therefore raised household incomes. There after a second study was carried out 93% of the farmers opted for a better housing than any other better house hold social indicator which prompted him to come up with the Harvest gaurantee Scheme. Basing on average 10 family members in a home an average 3 bedroom house costs US $ 2,100 but we worked out something better for the farmers and atleast a rural farmer can afford a low cost house at US $ 1400 dollors.This is about 3 years saving for 85% of the farmers if they are interested all practice modern farming skills

Contact Information:
Mathias  Nabutele
Ashoka Fellow
Managing Director
NFC Logistics (U) Ltd
(Busines)
Plot 47 Hared House Box 22966 Kampala
Uganda
Tel: + 256 (0) 712 755 909
Email: nabutele@nfc-logistics.com
Website: www.nfc-logistics.com