Paul Matovu’s work with Vertical and Micro Gardening (VMG) in Uganda has been nothing short of transformative; his rural upbringing being the catalyst for his passion to improve food accessibility especially in urban contexts. In this episode, we dive into the world of vertical farming, the role of policymakers in this vital and innovative sector, Africa’s role in ensuring its own food security, the importance of embracing African culture in design and mentorship, and the lessons that Paul has learned from his experimentation and failures. Paul’s journey is one of perseverance and adaptability proved fruitful.
@vertical_and_micro_gardening
@saiga.bairon
Instagram: @myafricanaesthetic
Website: https://www.myafricanaesthetic.com/
Paul Matovu’s work with Vertical and Micro Gardening (VMG) in Uganda has been nothing short of transformative; his rural upbringing being the catalyst for his passion to improve food accessibility especially in urban contexts. In this episode, we dive into the world of vertical farming, the role of policymakers in this vital and innovative sector, Africa’s role in ensuring its own food security, the importance of embracing African culture in design and mentorship, and the lessons that Paul has learned from his experimentation and failures. Paul’s journey is one of perseverance and adaptability proved fruitful.
@vertical_and_micro_gardening
@saiga.bairon
Instagram: @myafricanaesthetic
Website: https://www.myafricanaesthetic.com/
Welcome to my African Aesthetic, a podcast that interrogates the African aesthetic in African architecture and design.
Speaker 3:On this podcast, you'll hear about the work, philosophy and design process of African architects and designers practicing in Africa and the diaspora.
Speaker 2:My name is Eunice Nanzala-Shumaker. I'm a Ugandan architect and designer living and working in Norway.
Speaker 3:And my name is Penina Achayu-Laker. I am a Ugandan graphic designer, researcher and educator living and practicing in the USA.
Speaker 2:Our podcast features conversations with designers working to provide architecture and design solutions for Africa.
Speaker 3:We would like this to become a platform where our guests share their knowledge and experiences on designing in the diverse, hybrid and dynamic socioeconomic, cultural and political African context.
Speaker 2:We are looking forward to embarking on this journey with you. Welcome to the my African Aesthetic podcast. Today we are honored to have Paul Matauho from Vatiko and microgardening in Uganda. We have tried to get a hold of this guy and, finally, we are so excited to be able to share our conversation with Matauho on urban farming and sustainable, innovative agriculture solutions. So, paul, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 4:Thank you, Eunice. I'm very excited to be here and to speak to you and Penina.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're so excited to have you, and I will just add and say that we always enjoy the conversations we have with our guests on the podcast, but there is always something extra special when we have a guest who's from Uganda, just like us, because there are so many things about the lived experience growing up in Uganda that Eunice and I relate to, so I just want to just put that up there in case you know. As we go on with this episode, you know there's a lot of excitement, maybe even laughter. It's just for the sheer reason that you know we're getting to share some exciting memories. Even so, yes, paul, very excited to have you here and I will pass it back to Eunice to get us started.
Speaker 2:So we're curious to know how was your childhood like, just generally speaking.
Speaker 4:Well, I had very. My childhood was very interesting, I should say the only beauties that I never knew that I was a child.
Speaker 2:But so what do you mean by that? What do you mean by that?
Speaker 4:Well, every experience I had. I didn't know that I was having that experience as a child. To me it was just you know. So from the time I always tell people that I don't know who my mother is and if she ever listens to one of these conversations. So from the time my mother handed me over to my father, then that was, I was born in ginger, I think, because now this is me thinking, because the first language that I knew is from ginger, that's the town in the eastern part of the country. And then one day she handed me over to my father. I remember that day. And then my father handed me to my sister to take me home, which is in Kampala, and, interestingly, the first language I learned was not Luganda, which is my tribe, but I learned the people from Aruba speak Aruba, I think that's the language. So it's the first language that I learned.
Speaker 4:And then, yeah, but I was with my stepmother now and my father was never home because he was running, was managing a company that had buses and petrol stations in East Africa, so he was never home. I would only see him like once in four months or so, but he was a teacher by profession, so whenever he was home. He would teach me things and it took me so long to go to school because, you know, you know Kampala life and living with kids on the streets or from the ghetto. I started making money before I went to school. You know, go fetch water to be paid, spend the entire day fetching water or washing people's dishes to get paid. So one day I went home with, you know, a pile of new clothes like new clothes from that I bought using the money that I made, and my father was concerned that probably stole the money from someone. So, but then my life with my father was very shortly if people's.
Speaker 4:He had to send me to my grandmother in the village because there are many reasons why my stepmother had left the house. I didn't know whether that was divorced or separate, I didn't know anything, but she had left. So it was me and my father. So he had to send me to the village. But I also refused to go to school. They would send me to school and then I go make money. So he sent me to the village and I don't know how long. It was not very long after that when they told me that your father's died. Until, huh, he has died. What does that really mean?
Speaker 2:How old were you then?
Speaker 4:I can't tell because no one was my real age, but probably I was seven, eight years, somewhere around there, but I think around that time that's when UPE started. Upe, Universal Primary Education, that's like a free education system in Uganda started in 1997. So probably I was around eight years, I don't know. That's when I went to school. So I'm taking to class and you know it's my first time to really go and sit in class and stay there for seven hours or so and it was very challenging. You know, the urban life and the village life are totally different.
Speaker 3:These are different worlds.
Speaker 4:I'm looking at kids and it's very strange the kind of lifestyle they're living, and you know.
Speaker 4:But there was no shoes because the shoes I came with from Kanpla had been eaten by the rats, so I had no shoes. My feet also were victims of the rats because they had been eaten as well. So that's how I started school. But on the day that I entered school, I think that very, I was ever a number one in class. That's that I can thank God for. But then that was 97, 98 year later, I think, towards the end, I don't know my grandmother died, so now I had to go and live with my auntie and in 99, my auntie dies, and then I stay alone with my cousins and all that we don't know, yeah, also, but I occasionally rent my grandfather to ask for school requirements and all that, but he also died in 2001.
Speaker 4:So it's like everyone I was staying with was just dying. But I had to try, like I would go do digging, you know, for people just to make money or have this their, their crops, so they could pay me and I keep in school. Yeah, but I was lucky later on, in 2002. My uncle just he came, he was, he was in the US, he came back to Uganda and then took me to a proper school and life was never the same after. That's my childhood. So I totally understand how challenging it is for, you know, kids both in the urban areas and in the rural areas, but kids at the bottom of the pyramid, it's it's not easy. And also having hope that life will be better, it's very, very hard keeping that hope alive.
Speaker 2:Right now I'm like OK, this is where this is where the resilience comes from, this is where you know like the gogetting attitude comes from. We were talking earlier on, before the recording started, about privilege. You know about who, who gets to talk about design, who gets to talk about innovation, and unfortunately, life is unfair that mostly it's the people who have money, the people who know people like architecture, design, our innovation and, you know, entrepreneurship are so associated with a certain class of people, a certain group of people, and for me, it is very important that that our young people know that it doesn't matter, people are smart, whether they are poor or rich, they are smart, you know, and it's about opportunities.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think earlier, when we were talking about schools, you didn't know that I had this other background. Because of the schools, I went to right.
Speaker 2:Later on? Yeah, From your background it sounds like you were already an entrepreneur from a very young age. But when did you know that you were an entrepreneur? When did it hit you?
Speaker 4:I think my story is a bit strange because I never wished to be an entrepreneur.
Speaker 4:He never, crossed my mind and entrepreneurship. Just, we just met on a dinner probably that's what I should say Because when I joined University, I linked up with guys who were way older than me and one of them was my relative to start an environmental organization. So all my passion was more around protecting the environment and helping underserved communities, you know, working with them, supporting them to find solutions to their problems, and I don't with a mindset of entrepreneurship or making business out of that, but more of. I can be a very poor person, but I can share the little I have with these people in terms of knowledge in terms of organization and in terms of connecting them to opportunities that exist out there.
Speaker 4:So, but the entrepreneurship aspect comes in when I think I was in year two when we started, I called my friends and I said, guys, look, here we spend a lot of money on printing. You know, in Uganda, here they give you the handouts for reading and studying, so the printer is charged a lot of money for that kind of work. So I said I'm going to start this business. Now, when I start that, I felt it was a very fatal fall, like it was total, and I said I will stick to my community work and all that. Then that's in 2014, when I was finishing university. That's when I started this organization called what can micro gardening, but that's not the name it had. It was still. It was called Abba and micro gardening, something like that, and it was more of a project. And in 2016, around 2016, that's when we, the Batko farm, came into the picture. And now, when you have a product and this is what my mentor told me that when you a product, needs leadership, you know, want to scale a product based on charity, you need to find an in between between charity and business, and he kept insisting that you need to think about product leadership, not just business leadership. But to go to the market needs a certain type of mindset and certain type of training. So that's when they now the entrepreneurship started to come into play.
Speaker 4:You know now and I experimented we got first 1000 USD. Throw out a project in revenue sorry in slums in Kampala. And then we gave people free things. You know, free, free Batko farms now at seedlings and seeds and all that. And then when they went back, it's like everything. You couldn't trace the donations and eventually I learned that there are challenges with redistribution because in one way it kills the spirit of ownership. Some people don't take responsibility and initiative, so you need commitment from those beneficiaries. So it's something that kept growing and the more I thought about the community, the more I thought about this product must be scaled. We need to raise money to scale to more communities. You can't just look for grants or just look for donations all the time. You need an enterprise that can make money One way or another if you're to help more people, to create more impact. So, like I said, for me it's a complicated journey. Just didn't come one day that I'm going to be an entrepreneur and I'm going to do this. It didn't happen that way.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think that is very I wouldn't necessarily say it's unique in its own way, because it's your journey, but I think there is something about you need to use the word resilience earlier, and that's one of the things I thought about when you were sharing your story. And even just one of the things that stood out to me was when you said you struggled in school, in the early stages of school, because you had had a taste of fending for yourself and understanding what you need to do to make money from a very, very young age. That my assumption is. When you went into the classroom and now here.
Speaker 3:You went to the classroom, forced to be a very much a passive learner, which is, I know that you're going to an education and I can imagine that point of tension for you at a young age, and I know that a lot of young people who will still have what we would call a pretty good education in Uganda but we'll be lacking in critical thinking and creative problem solving skills that they will graduate. How many? We graduate so many graduates every year in Uganda and there's always statistics coming up about how many of them are failing to find jobs or just not even using their degrees. But I find it exciting to hear that even while at campus, you and your friends and your relatives, like you, already you started forging something and this enterprise that is now doing really well in vertical farming was born. But I think some of those characteristics you can trace back to your those early days of whether it was being in the streets.
Speaker 3:I mean, unfortunately, you had to move from place to place, you had that spirit in you and that desire to serve, so that that is something that I am reflecting on as I'm hearing you share your story.
Speaker 4:When I go to, when I visit schools or groups of young people, especially orphans or underserved communities, there's something I said to them that if you have nothing in life, you have everything to fight for Because you have nothing. You have to do your best to have something. You can't choose to sit and say I don't have anything and I'll just stay this way, and you don't have time to just be comfortable. There is no comfort zone in having nothing. There is no comfort there. So that's the push. But one thing that I forgot earlier on in my senior six vacation I was working at a construction site in Uganda called Importers, and so they were paying us roughly two, three dollars per day.
Speaker 4:But, you know how hectic that work is, but I was making money. It's very laborious, yeah, but I was making money because I would be taken to the sites and put back home and I would just keep the money.
Speaker 4:But, then I told my the person managing that company was my uncle. So I told him I don't want to work as a reporter in that case. I want you to give me a site to do a. Locally they call it backfilling, so you know how they dig the foundation and do the construction of the foundation and then you have to bring back the earth and just level the ground and do that. So I started taking on those contracts and that's how I got money. When I went to campus I was a rich boy. I had some money in my pocket. That's amazing.
Speaker 3:I identified a gap and a need in this like you know workplace and you felt you had the courage to, like you said I think you had nothing to lose. He's like if you have nothing in life, you have everything to fight for. Like, hey, I want to try it. But that's the spirit that, unfortunately, I feel.
Speaker 3:Like a lot of us going through the education system, we were not just because of the way we were taught. We were never asked what our opinions were, what we thought. We didn't have that extra, because that's critical thinking. Like we don't ask why. You're like how can I trust? Always you tell me what I need to do and I'll do exactly. I'll do it very well Because that's the pleasure. But you're, you had an extra layer of of fighting you, and I think that's how young people need to to know that I know that any one of them is very capable of coming up with great ideas, executing ideas, of thinking differently, of tinkering, trying, and we should be encouraging that. I feel like we should transition a little bit more, as we are now learning about the early stages of your vertical and micro gardening organization.
Speaker 3:But maybe just one small step back, this idea of farming or you know, you have a chance to talk about your core values. But in reading a little bit more about what you do and watching you speak, it became very clear to me that you know, at the core of what you do, yes, you have a desire to help, especially those communities that are underserved. You have a desire to, to say that you know no one goes hungry, that we live in a country with such good climate. You know we have agriculture generally does well in Uganda, and regardless of whether you're in the rural areas, in the urban areas, everyone should have access to food. And then there's that entrepreneurship layer to it. But why farming? Why food? Why agriculture? Why climate? How do those things all come together for you?
Speaker 4:So in the first place as a child, before I went to my grandfather in the village, there are many cases when I would just eat food from the, from the dustbin, because that is what was available and I got used to it Like I would look at it and it's, this is nice bread, you know, this is how can someone throw away good food like this? And I remember my stepmother was she owned a store like she was vending tomatoes. And I remember one day, I don't know for some reasons, I listened to their conversation with my father.
Speaker 4:They gave she had. The startup capital was about 5000 Uganda shillings for the business, and so there wasn't a lot of money really and you know, with a father who is barely home, you can imagine that it's not very easy to have food at home when the when your mother has to take care of everything.
Speaker 4:And also for the time I was in the village, I came to learn that there is a bumper harvest. Sometimes you have the food during the bumper harvest and what our people in the villages do is that they are going to sell off everything and very soon, very soon, there will not be food.
Speaker 4:You know, imagine you're growing the food and you're just selling off everything and then you go back to having nothing. For the year between my primary theory and primary five, when I was living with my cousins, honestly, we would have one meal a day, so no breakfast, no lunch would only eat after returning from school, that's after five, and one of us would stay home to cook and the other two would go to the gallant, to. You know, try and plant something or take care of the crops that are already planted. So I know that, irrespective of the you know talked about a band and say earlier on, you know, irrespective of the abundance and the good climate, the good weather, it's not just those things there is a lot to do with farm planning. There is a lot to do with harvest handling. There is a lot to do with the discipline. You know how do you strike a balance between the economics of farming and the food security. You know how do you strike a balance in between there, because I know that and I've been in the village for a long time Now I know that most people in the villages, for instance, would have food. They'll eat food without sauce, but these are the people who grow the ground nuts, the beans and everything we eat in the cities and you have constant supply of food in the cities, but the window for supply in the villages is very, very short. It's very narrow like this, and so my idea is more around the people in the village that have the, because I have the knowledge. I know, you know farming.
Speaker 4:I was first actually to farm. You don't know how many times I was a bit normal to live because I refused to go to the garden. I was forced to learn how to farm and the situation forced me to love it, you know, and then to start going crops to make money. So for me it's not even something that I didn't require too much training. Of course you need training, you need extra knowledge, but I already knew how to take care of the crops. So how do you bring that knowledge from the village to the city, where people don't have the knowledge and they don't have the space as well? So, in terms of how do these things come interact? For me it was okay. The people in the village, people like me and there are very many people who have backgrounds from the village when they come to the city, they want to do farming, they may want to participate in it, but there is no space and they don't know how to do it or where to do it.
Speaker 4:So when we started, it was more looking out for ideas that already exist, because you don't want to reinvent the wheel. So the hot cake at that time was the sack garden. You know everyone is promoting the sack garden. Even now you find many organizations are promoting the sack. So that's what we started with and trying to innovate around that and the vertical farm. When you look at that vertical farm, it's actually inspired by the sack. Everything around it was inspired by the sack.
Speaker 4:But the idea behind the change in material, the change in design, was because Wester solved questions to do with what can be improved, what might we do to make the sack a better farming, innovation and eventually what came out of that those exercises, those ideation sessions was not a sack, it was something else, called the vertical farm. But I give credit to the guys who started the sack gardens. But then the sack is not durable and also in terms of capacity, they can't, they are not scalable and I can't say I'll put another sack on top of this other sack. That option is not available. But our biggest challenge was more to do with the durability, because for most of the sacks, in less than a season it will tear apart and that causes a lot of issues. So how do we make a durable product that accommodates many crops?
Speaker 4:But because of my environmental background, because I studied forestry and one of the projects that I was implementing while it was in university was to do with environmental conservation we had projects to do with cleanup exercises in the city, to do with tree planting exercises, awareness around climate mitigation, climate change adaptation. So how? The question was can we use the waste in the city as a raw material for fertilizers or for manure? Because some people are already doing it. And then the question was is that something that could be part of the product that we designed? So, in the center of the vertical farm you find in the composting chamber.
Speaker 4:That was intentional. I designed to turn waste into a fertilizer, because waste is in a banners in Kampala. You can't, actually you can do very little, very little to manage it, because it's too much that we need very many options, rather very many innovations around waste management. So that's what we did putting the system in between the forestry and waste into fertilizer so that eventually a few of this organic manure, organic fertilizer. It can be used. It can be applied on the plants that you plant on the vertical farm so that the product is so fertilizing. This is more of circular agribusiness and trying to be as organic as we can without having the need to buy synthetic agro-info.
Speaker 2:You've talked about things like food security you talked about circular economy.
Speaker 2:Sustainability comes in there and also touching on when you decided to improve or to upgrade from the sack to the vertical garden, issues of material and choice. I am curious. In this process from idea to final product, I'm sure you come into contact with so many different people. You have the fundraising that's one thing, because you need money to scale and all that but you also have designers you get into contact with. Maybe can you please just take us through quickly, like this process. How is it so that it doesn't seem so complicated for a person who is interested in finding their niche in farming?
Speaker 4:So I'll tell you something quite interesting. The first model that you see, the wooden box, the process of making that product was. We didn't follow any formal design process. I had the background of wood science team by Antries, so I understood that you need, if you want to make something that you're about to team by. This is what you need to do. Now, my friend, who is a lawyer but very good at fine art, is the one that drew that helped me to draw whatever I was thinking. His name is Anis, so I'll tell you Anis, I'm talking about something that is like this and I'm very bad at drawing. Anis, I need you to understand what I'm saying. And he would draw like 10 times and I said no, that's not what I'm talking about. So we make the first thing and then we put it there and then when the rain comes, boom, the thing is taken by the rain and I say I'd like to sleep less nights, just think about how to make this better.
Speaker 3:And in the morning I tell him.
Speaker 4:Anis, I think I have an idea. So you need, we need, to do. You know, when someone is explaining something to you without visuals, it becomes very, very hard. So I tell him, anis, what I'm telling you is it should have these angles. So that's how we come up with that initial model that everyone knows, the MGiv. But after that stage and after rolling that product out, you know that's the prototype and the MVP. After that we had a pilot, we did customer feedback surveys and all that just to understand how this is working and all that. Another feedback we got was around.
Speaker 4:There was a big issue, a big problem, that that vertical form was costing 810,000 Iwana shillings, that's somewhere above 250 USD, just to manufacture one. And that means that we had to sell it, to retail it, at a price above 1 million Iwana shillings. And here we are trying to work with the bottom of the pyramid community. Yes, wow, that's not appropriate. There is an issue with product market feeds. Even when it could be appropriate technology, this is not the right market for a pricey product like this. So we had to think around how do we bring down the cost of production? And that took us at least two years to find a solution. But the solution was more around the production process, because you are working with the local craftsmen, the carpenter and so forth, and they would charge you like four or five times the actual price that it takes to manufacture this thing and just to make get one unit. I remember having some units taking us up to three months just to have one unit. You know how carpenter in.
Speaker 4:Uganda behave.
Speaker 4:You go today. The guy is hiding. You can't find him, you call. He has switched off his phone. So the solution was simple have your own production facility and have control over the costs of production and then try to optimize resources. And so we brought down the cost by about 75%, from 800 and 10,000, somewhere close to 300,000, I don't remember how much exact price was in the organ actually links. Then, after we still needed to bring this down and realize that what was making us lose money about 100,000 organ actually links, how much is that in USD? Somewhere above 30 USD, close to 35. Yeah, it was just two inches. Two inches of the product is what was making us lose all that money Really. We just said to find a way of getting rid of two inches of the product.
Speaker 4:Amazing.
Speaker 4:And then we save all that money. So, for that product, that has been the journey, but then we have had to make changes because the way it's designed tells some challenges which I may not mention here for the actual purposes. But we got a lot of feedback around that and then we said, okay, we need to make some design changes, and that's when we started working with designers. You know so, right now we work with design with our borders, but also we have some interns who have design experience or design students and it all.
Speaker 4:One thing that we eventually learned is that you can't design a product for the market from your bedroom. When you do that, you're designing a product for yourself, not for the market, and so going all the way from research to ideation to all those steps that you have to take to design a product until you roll out, come to a prototype that you now have to test, takes a long time until you come to a minimum viable product. Yeah, so it's a lengthy process. It's also quite expensive Because one of the challenges I think you know I was sharing with you offline sometime back that it's hard to get designers in Uganda. It doesn't mean that they're not there, but it's not easy because I think design is not one of the common courses that we do here in Uganda, so it's a bit challenging. But we have good designers, we really have good designers, and right now we have over 30 vertical firm designs in our store. You know Some of these are futuristic ideas.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we have all these ideas. It's just going to be okay. Let's take it one at a time and see how that goes. It's going to be. It's not as easy as it seems, you know, because just bringing one product to market is not easy. It's not easy, and sometimes you bring it to the market and you get disappointments with how it's performing.
Speaker 4:Then you have to rethink. Yeah, so we're doing our best. Amid this. You know there is this issue around local communities appreciating indigenous designs. So it's like some people see these products and they say, oh, you got these ones from the internet. Come on, this has taken us three years to design. You can't say this is something from the internet. They're like, oh, probably if you saw it, then you visit my YouTube channel. You cannot design something like this. You say, okay, you know. Yeah, so we have to work around stereotype, this kind of stereotype. You know you can and Africans cannot come up with ideas like this.
Speaker 4:Some of them think that these ideas are inspired by the global community. Of course, when we design some of these ideas, we think more around can this product work in another match? Because we don't want to think too small that Uganda, compared to the only market that we should be serving, it's a very small market. If you're not scaling, you know it's a very small market. Of course, the cities are growing, but we'd love to serve as many cities as possible. So we think about applicability of this solution to any places that have the same challenges.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I have a question. When you talk about also scaling, but generally applying this concept or other cities in Africa or around the world, yeah, there is this whole thing about space and planning. You know city planning and knowing, now that you have worked within the city, you know planting trees in other capacities, the concept of space and how to let the city breathe. You know parks, green spaces, and do you see these vertical gardens as part of green Kampala?
Speaker 4:That's a very good question. So I think five years ago we had a conversation with Kampala Capital City Authority around something like this. I think it could be more than five years actually and they were very, very happy with the idea. So we've tried to study the we're looking at the city plans and all that and see where do we fall, how can we work together with the city authorities. And, by the way, we had this conversation before Kampala Capital City Authority set up their ABBA and Demonstration Fund, and so it was part of the conversation. But then, for some reason, we just couldn't you know.
Speaker 4:But how this fits into what you're asking is that, you see, we always thought that one square meter because that's the original model of the vertical farm we have, that's the dimension, one square meter and we thought that's very small space, that everyone should have one square meter. You can have one square meter. The truth is no, not everyone. You know people who live in apartments or they have these. You call Mizzigo in English, I don't know the right one, but you know that kind of apartment setting in the low income areas.
Speaker 1:They don't have that one square meter yeah yeah, you don't find that kind of space.
Speaker 4:So what we have done is study more, have a better understanding of what is the average space that first and second apartment has and what do they have to use that space for, and so the designing is informed by how much space is available for the urban dealer to install a vertical farming unit like this, and so that's something that we were already working around that. But I think the right thing to do is to also have not just discussions but good relationships and input from the city authorities, because in some instances, there are policies that would stop you from doing something. You need to know how do policies inform or affect or influence your innovations? So, for our vertical farms, yeah, we have had people planting passion fruits, for instance, on the vertical farms, yet we thought initially we would only use this for growing vegetables, only leafy vegetables. We have people planting cucumber, we have some people who are planting corn, and you know we have. Of course, we are devised on what you should plant, based on very many parameters, but you can plant, for instance, or orange, sweet potatoes and things like that for nutrition purposes. So, yes, we want to blend.
Speaker 4:Not only to blend, but to work within the established framework or, if possible and this is where I feel a bit not cheated, but I feel we may not be doing better yet how do these innovations like the vertical farm, how do we do we have the opportunity to discuss with the policy makers around catering for innovations like vertical farms or things like this?
Speaker 4:If you're talking about climate change, if you're talking about winning the city and things like this, where do we sit at a policy level, for instance, as innovators, where do we sit? Our opinions, is our expertise also something that's being used by the cities and municipalities? Of course, we can only do so much, but I think, besides just designing the things and saying all we want to set up what firms in cities across Africa, we need to have that kind of relationship and also to understand the mindset of the policy makers, because if we don't do that, you know when I talked about designing things from your bedroom- you could design something really good for the target market, but when it's not good for the policy maker, you know, for some reasons.
Speaker 4:You know some of those could be political, some of those could be technical reasons, and you need to be aware. So you talked. You asked me about scaling. So we've gone further to think more beyond the cities. Now our focus has moved beyond just urban areas, land constrained places. You'll notice that, for instance, people in refugee settlements a family sale of 12 people has 30 square meters, you know, to feed them, you know that's where they're going to build all their houses, to go with the family. So we have now designed some, some versions of the vertical farm that can be installed in refugee settlements, for instance. You know all this is because we're thinking about where are the land constraints, which communities are facing land constraints, and you know we have something around environment, about winning the city.
Speaker 4:And then sometimes come back and think about the original mode of the vertical farm, which is wooden, and people always keep asking so how many trees do you have to cut down to make one vertical farm? So that's, we are also being keen around that. So we're designing new models that are less intensive. But also, how do we make use of local available materials, design innovations? Yeah, because, as a forest, I can give you the reasons why we choose this particular type of world and how to put the environment and how we support with forest liberation, as I know that, but in reality, we want to reduce our contribution towards deforestation or anything like that. That's something that we are very sensitive to. So can we do what plastic composite? Can we do what recycling? Those are things that we are really keen about, but, like I mentioned, this is not something you can talk about today and say I'll have this accomplished next year. It's like Very complex.
Speaker 4:Very complex.
Speaker 3:It's very complex, but yet I appreciate the spirit of innovation and iteration that you as an organization and company go through, that you're not just satisfied with. Here's this product, this one size fits all, that. You're continuously improving the product and, and even when it's doing well, you're continuing to see okay, even as we move into new markets, how can we be aware of the kinds of materials that we could use? And I think that's a that's a really good way to think I'm interested in hearing more about. I think, especially because it's a kind of product that is impacts the livelihoods of people. There is, I imagine there is a an education opportunity as well that comes with having to not only teach people how to use a product and farm. But this is what we're talking about like fresh food.
Speaker 3:We're talking about nutrition. We're talking about how this could improve your overall health and well-being. How are you guys addressing or bridging that knowledge gap that might come with as an implication of people now being able to grow their own food, and that's?
Speaker 4:a good question. You know, in forestry I always had a saying when I was speaking, teaching people to plant trees, that it's actually not the planted, it is the management. Anyone can plant a tree, but how you, what you do after planting the tree, is really what matters. It's the same thing with crops it's not about planting the crops, because if I gave you a seed, you can plant the seed, but managing that seed to harvest and eventually post-havis, that's what really matters. So one of the services we offer is and it's called agriculture extension services, but it's more of the advisory services, so supporting the farmer from the day they get the vertical farm until they have wasted they have wasted crops. So it's more of it's leave alone the group trainings that we give, but one-on-one, you know, because different farmers will have different challenges. So for the vertical farm, you have one month free of this training, of this advisory services, and then, after that one month, then you'll pay a small amount of money, you know, for extra training. The reason behind that is, you know, you're using the vertical farm for two, three years as a business or as a social enterprise. We don't have enough money to invest in trainers over the next three years if you're not contributing anything. So it's more of okay, let's share the cost. We'll give you the knowledge, we'll give you the training. But we always feel happy if you can, if you learn really fast and you can manage it by yourself. But we always have other to do the trainings. So, in the refugee segments, what we do is that there is a big budget of the these, you know, humanitarian programs, the food security programs that we do big budget of that is more to do with the training and that training has a lot of, not just about the crops and the vertical farms, but the trainings about around nutrition, the trainings around climate change, for instance, the project that we are going to start implementing next month, it's a climate change project. So, as the vertical farm is just a tool, but there is knowledge that comes with that, you know so because you need all that training and then, but we promote organic farming a lot, so a lot of training around organic farming.
Speaker 4:How do you make your organic fertilizers? How do you make it manual? What are the local options you have instead of just buying industrial, you know, agro inputs. What local options can you have? When should you be worried? We live in a world where people think that when you find your crop with anything anything could be an insect or a trail of a snail moving on the leaf you have to be worried. Go to the store, buy this chemical and apply. And it's not easy getting that out of people's minds. So those are some of the things we talk about. Does this cause economic loss or not?
Speaker 4:And from the needs assessment, from the what go, we need to know are you doing this for to make money? Are you doing this for food security? Are you doing this for some other reason? So we want to give you a device and the training is best on your needs. But also, if it's a project, what are the objectives of the project? And we want to try and achieve that. So it's just. It's not just about giving you the product and then you say oh, we gave you the vertical farm. See you next time, go and farm. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You've highlighted on different projects that you've worked on, but if you briefly could touch on the COVID-19 response project that you worked on, oh, yes, yes, COVID-19.
Speaker 4:And I mentioned this to you, that I was sick and I've never fully recovered. I don't, I've checked to see if I don't know, but anyway, we got a lot of demand. Covid was and I open on our side, because before then we thought that the age group that's most interested in farming are people above 40 years plus. So during COVID because we try to engage people online, you know, it's like 80% of people who are reaching out were young people in their 20s or 30s and like, ah, this wasn't what we thought. You know, this wasn't our initial target group.
Speaker 4:So, but we understood that because of the restrictions and movements, you know, people were not working, getting to have money to buy food, and some of them those who had the money but who were home needed something to keep them busy, to be active. For some of them it was an opportunity for them to get kids how to grow food, how to practice farming. So that's the opportunity. So we're lucky. You know, working with a circle. A circle is more like how do you? It's like a smaller version of a microfinance.
Speaker 3:It's a savings group.
Speaker 4:Savings and credit societies. So you're working with women, especially stay home mothers, because they are the duty bearers in most cases when it comes to food and all that. So you know, giving them the vertical farms. In some we had to do a few different approaches. In one of the approaches it was we give you with the vertical farm and then you can pay back any stormings and for one of them it was more of can they do some sort of group farming? And then we do what we call share crop arrangement. You know, you give us some bit of your produce, of your harvest, and then that will cope the investment.
Speaker 4:So, yeah, it was quite exciting because there are also international players that we worked with. Some of them did invest a lot of money, but that little money invested was really impactful because that's what we needed at that moment to work with communities to try and interest them into farming and COVID. Because of COVID most people came to realize that one of the most the immediate thing you need is food. You may do without very many other things, you can do without a car, you can do without whatever it is, but you can't do without food.
Speaker 3:And around that time the government started.
Speaker 4:They were giving out some.
Speaker 4:There was food aid, food relief distributions, but the capacity you know, how many people live in this country in the cities, and the capacity of the government to serve everyone wasn't enough. But the government did whatever it called then, so trying to come in and say, okay, what is it that we can do to supplement on what the government is already doing? Which comment is going to work with? But also, we are a small organization, so we're just doing the best we can and looking for partners that could work with to support families that were struggling with food.
Speaker 3:That's amazing. It's always interesting to see how COVID impacted different businesses, organizations, groups and for some, you know, covid allowed people to finally see oh my goodness the value of, for example, food in this case. You know different people had different experiences during COVID, but who are especially impressed with just how during the time of COVID, not just the response of your team, but also how that became a really good learning opportunity for just the general public around.
Speaker 4:Can I actually add something to that? Yes, please. So we were lucky that around that time we thought about a remote team. So, like I said, we're having local solutions, we're designing solutions locally that can create global, international impact. So local solutions, locally designed, but possibly internationally applicable. So then we started a remote team, so we had remote volunteers and we were lucky to. You know, there are very many people who applied to work with us remotely so that we could get, you know, global perspectives on the kind of work we do. But also, you know, some people could not donate money but they could donate their effort their skills their expertise.
Speaker 4:So we retained 12 remote volunteers, you know, from different parts of the world Beats, france, ukraine or the US, or German or wherever it is. We had very, very many, so we had 12 of them that we retained and these are the people that helped a lot with the COVID response program and we have retained some of those even up to now. We still have the volunteering program, where people are just donating their expertise, their skills, their time. So, yeah, that was a game changer in the way for us, and most of the videos that you may see around COVID time we have created, created by those teams directed and edited by remote volunteers.
Speaker 3:That's amazing.
Speaker 3:Yes because one of the things we talked about and well, eunice and I have a passion of championing is telling African stories and bringing more visibility to the great things that very many creative minded people in the continent are doing, so that you know when you know if we're talking about things like whether it's like climate, climate change or resilience or things like that, people should not think that, like those are, those are solutions that can only happen in the Western world, but that they're very much happening in the developing or maybe like even more than you think, because they're part of our cultures and so stories like this become so critical, and I'm so thankful that the during COVID, it allowed for that to be more opportunities for those stories to be told, and it's great because now it's like the footprint is there, you can't deny it. But thinking about vertical, vertical farming, yes, why aren't you talking about Paul, like, if you're looking for experts, like you should be looking to, don't, you know, find an expert to talk about Uganda? That's coming from Belgium, like, really?
Speaker 3:So, so we're hoping to change those perceptions and narratives too with things like our little podcast.
Speaker 4:So that's very exciting to see.
Speaker 3:So I know, I know we're starting to get to the end of the podcast and we are going to be wrapping up very soon, and but before we, before we get to the end here, I would love to to have you take a few moments and just speak to those young people who are either still in secondary school, maybe they're in campus. They are in that stage of life of figuring out what do I do with my life, how do I translate what I'm learning into a viable career, or how do I give back to the community, what are some things that, from your own experience seeing, you've had a very unique journey, but just things that you would say. Here are some. Here are some core things that I would advise young people to keep in mind as they start to navigate that next stage of their careers.
Speaker 4:To start with, we're working with some very good people. You guys, you might know Caritas Carisimbi, and there is someone from Kenya called Tadith. There is this project called Little Farmers. So we went all this out to you know schools across the country. So I'm on that project with them already just to introduce kids to environmental protection, food security, that kind of, you know, inculcate this kind of knowledge and change their perspectives and also them to understand how this really is important for society. So, yeah, some episodes have already been aired here on YouTube. You can find the Little Farmers.
Speaker 4:As a young person, you know, if I look back 10, 15 years ago, one thing that I should have asked myself and that I encourage fellow young people to ask themselves is what's your purpose in life? You know that's a very good question. Someone said this to me when I was in senior six that you can easily survive, but thriving is something that's really hard. So how do you thrive? But beyond that, you could say I want to have money, I want to have this. It's easy for you to get money, but what's your purpose in life? So, think about purpose and stick to the purpose. So, for those who understand that, for instance, food security or environmental protection are important, you know, concepts for our generation and for humanity in general.
Speaker 4:The first thing is understanding where the gap is, because if you don't know where the gap is, then you're just going to wander around trying to do everything. Then try to identify who is doing what. These could be ideas, these could be initiatives or solutions that other people are already working on. And if you find that there is something you're interested in and you look around and people are already doing it, is it possible to work with those people to help them further their mission, further their objectives? Because you just don't want to reinvent the wheel. And that's the problem we have here in Uganda that when someone sees you're doing this, they want to go and do the same thing. I will say this frankly there are people in Uganda who are plagiarizing our vertical firms and have seen them even on international platforms, like they're using my photos, my videos and just so for other young people. You know that's.
Speaker 4:Think about If you like it's okay to like something approach the owner, approach whoever is doing this. Have a talk with them. People are always very open to ideas. They are open to partnerships and collaboration. So don't rush so much into. I want to start this because this person is doing it. Then, where possible, try to learn from other people. You know you need to learn. You need to know what you don't know. You need to know your weaknesses and know who to learn from. People are willing to teach. People are willing to give opportunities.
Speaker 4:I've given opportunities to very many young people and I don't mean that it's only me there are very many people who are willing to help, very many people who are willing to mentor, very many people willing to train young talent.
Speaker 4:We need the young talent for our businesses, but also just need young talent in our countries, because if you don't do that, it doesn't help to say, oh, I'm the best. In Uganda, who said you're the best? And how does it help you if you're the only one who is trying? Eventually you might get overwhelmed. And so we need to raise a new breed for young innovators, young entrepreneurs, young critical thinkers that are supported. And so to the young people I would say find your passion, identify a gap, find out if there are people who are already feeling that gap and try to see how you can deal with those people. And if no one is feeling that gap, then try to think about solutions, but solutions that a user and customer face.
Speaker 4:Don't think about solutions just from your bedroom. Engage the stakeholders, engage your target beneficiaries, your target customers, from the beginning. That's going to help you to find appropriate solutions very, very early. Otherwise, if you just gamble around, it's going to take you a lot of time. When the open source of people. And the last thing is when you invest in systems we need to think about setting up systems and processes from the word go. Otherwise you can just do. You can do a lot of work, but if there is no sort of organization you don't go very far. So that's the last thing I would say to fellow young people.
Speaker 3:That is very, very, very well said. And, eunice, if you'd just allow me to borrow the words of Professor McGendey on the podcast and he had just started during COVID he was probably like I think like that maybe the second or the third person we talked to and he shared with us this Somali proverb that I feel fits very well with what you just shared, paul. He said children who are born on an anthill take a shorter time to mature, and essentially what it's talking about is for a lot of young people out there. Just like you've said, it's not about reinventing the wheel.
Speaker 3:They need to realize that there are so many people who've gone before them and if they're really smart at positioning themselves, seeking out those people, looking for partnerships and collaborations, asking for mentorship, that really, whatever their ideas are, they don't need to go through that same ojo-wise process we've gone through, because people like you have already gone through some of those hard things and would love for more than anything to help them avoid any heartaches that they don't need to along the way, so they should just recognize that it's much more beneficial to make sure you do your homework, identify who's already doing this so you can see how you can support what they're doing, how they can mentor you.
Speaker 3:Anyway, I think that proverb is perfectly shared.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it comes in handy. That reminds me when we first went to Oxford. We made very many professors and one of these professors, when he came to interact with us, we were like five, four innovators. His focus was more where are you failing, or when did you fail or have you failed, and for him, his interest is more in the failures and eventually, out of our talk, what became evident is that it's OK to fail. Try to learn from the failure and start again. It's very OK to fail. So, because most of the problems we get with our young innovators, young entrepreneurs, once we fail we go into depression. Some of us just totally give up and all that. But we need to learn, we need to be taught how to handle failure and to appreciate that we are bound to fail in one way or another. It's not about how many times you fail, but how you handle that failure and how you turn it around, come back stronger.
Speaker 2:Fantastic. I am not going to let you go without asking you our final question in the context of what you do, but also you could approach it in exactly who you are. What is your African aesthetic? What are the things you associate with Africa? You know African aesthetics, that. What things come to mind?
Speaker 4:Mm, one of the important things to me is is the culture and how that culture really informs not only the designs, but also informs our lifestyle and everything else that we do, including how we speak, for instance. So to me, for people out there who are not African, it's very critical to understand our culture, because everything we do you know, the outside, or the words that we say or the way we behave, is largely formed by our cultures, and it's very diverse, you know. It's diverse too because I can easily tell if someone is from Kenya and they come to Uganda. We are African, but in less than five minutes I will know that this is Kenya. It doesn't have to tell me. But that's what I really love about it and the way that informs, for instance, the way we dress, you know, in terms of the designs of our dresses or the designs of our houses.
Speaker 4:You know, I think of course there's been some influence of the global culture and the global designs, but when you look at it from the African perspective and just focus on what's really African, to me, that's what really excites me. And the last thing is more about how we handle ourselves and how we handle people. You know, when you move this world. You say, ok, I want to go back to Africa now because I miss the African. It's not because you can't find this elsewhere, but there is a way that Africa is built. Africa is a beauty.
Speaker 3:Wow, that's great. Thank you so much, paul, for giving us your time, sharing your story, impacting wisdom and instilling hope in our young people. We are very excited to keep following your journey as you continue scaling beyond the urban areas in Uganda. We hope to see you one time on the continent stage, impacting communities all over the continent and beyond. And yeah, we are just so honored to have you on the African aesthetic podcast and appreciate you for your time. So thank you very much.
Speaker 4:Thanks so much, Penna. Thanks so much, Yannis. It's been very exciting speaking with you. I wish we still have five more hours to just talk. Yeah, all right. Thanks so much, guys. I really appreciate the opportunity to be on this platform.
Speaker 3:Thank you for joining us today.