We launched in Uganda to close the gap between the businesses and NGOs that need compliant, well-run operations, and the casual and informal workers the financial system leaves behind. We do it by combining technology platforms we build in-house with hands-on research, advisory and compliance support.
According to the Uganda Bureau of Statistics Labour Market Survey 2025, 87.6% of the workforce — close to 90% once agriculture is included — works without a contract, social security or any regulatory protection. An estimated 7.3 million people earn their living in informal businesses: paid in cash, invisible to banks, with no payslip, no leave, no NSSF, and no record that they ever worked at all.
This is the decent-work gap. A job is a number; decent work — safe, documented, paid correctly, free of child labour, counted in the system — is an outcome. And it is the outcome the informal economy systematically fails to deliver. Uganda has roughly 21 occupational-safety inspectors and about 198 labour officers for a workforce of more than 10 million. Enforcement alone cannot close a gap this size. Infrastructure can.
Basket Advisory Technologies is an advisory technology company launched in Uganda to do two things at once: help businesses and NGOs run compliant, well-managed operations, and bring the workers behind those operations into the formal financial system. Most firms in our space do one or the other — they either build software, or they give advice. We do both, deliberately. We build practical platforms for payroll, payments, agribusiness fieldwork and credit scoring, and we wrap them in the research, advisory and compliance work needed to make them effective on the ground — from URA and NSSF compliance to labour law, mobile-money payouts and agri-finance. The tools make the advice actionable; the advice and research make the tools matter.
Payroll, Quick Pay bulk payments, Books, and field tools (Jirani & Tajiri) — built for Ugandan businesses.
Our PAYE and terminal-benefits calculators are used by employers and employees across Uganda.
Payroll compliance, agribusiness programmes, financial reporting and go-to-market strategy.
Through BwalaPay, we help workers and businesses build the credit profiles that unlock fair finance.
Our model is simple: we combine over a decade of real operating experience with technology we develop in-house, and we use both to execute and support operations — not just advise on them. When we help a business run payroll for casual workers, we do it on the same Basket Payroll platform we built. When we mobilise farmers or score informal workers for credit, it runs on Jirani and BwalaPay, our own systems. Every directorate follows the same pattern: a technology platform that does the work, wrapped in research, advisory and compliance that makes it sound and sustainable. This is what separates us from a consultancy that hands you a report — we hand you working systems and stand beside you while they run.
One model, five on-ramps. Payroll for casual workers, farmer mobilisation, field distribution, logistics credit, labour compliance — each is a different door into the same goal: bringing excluded people into the formal economy, with the data that lets them access finance.
Uganda has made real progress on financial inclusion — most adults now have a mobile-money wallet. But a wallet is not the same as access to finance. The casual labourer, the market vendor, the boda rider and the smallholder farmer are still invisible to lenders, because their income leaves no formal record. They are counted as "included," yet they cannot borrow to grow, smooth a hard month, or build an asset.
Our vision is to close that gap — to give every working Ugandan, especially the women and young people locked out of meaningful financial access, a verifiable income footprint that turns them from invisible into bankable. Every time we run a worker's payroll, score a vendor's cash activity, or record a farmer's deliveries, we are building the evidence that lets a bank say yes. That is the heart of what we do: not just paying people, but making them count.
The real gap isn't a wallet — it's credit. We exist to turn everyday income that no institution can see into the financial record that unlocks fair, formal finance for the people who need it most.
The sectors that run on casual labour are the same sectors where workers vanish from the record — field programmes, supply chains, warehouses, last-mile delivery. Basket's platforms are built to capture those workers: to source them, document them, pay them correctly, and prove — to funders, regulators and buyers — that the work was decent, traceable and free of exploitation. Each platform is an on-ramp for a different invisible population, and together they form one pool that makes work count.
NGO and development programmes reach smallholder farmers and warehouse handlers who hold no documents and sit outside the financial grid. Jirani captures them at the point of sourcing — building a traceable record of who grew, handled and moved what — so beneficiaries are verifiable and child labour is designed out of the chain.
Every corporate distribution network runs on casuals who never appear on a payroll: loaders, warehouse cleaners, drivers, agents. Tajiri captures the whole informal layer of the supply chain, turning a scattered, cash-paid crowd into a named, paid and trackable workforce for the companies that depend on them.
First-mile bulk medicine is moved by drivers and loaders, and delivered by last-mile health workers — many of them volunteers, entirely locked out of formal systems. Rafiki traces medicine from warehouse to the verified patient and captures the people who carry it, so donors see their funds reach the last mile and the workers are finally counted.
Whatever captures a worker, Basket Payroll pays them — by bank, mobile money or agent-delivered cash — and in doing so creates the payslip, the PAYE and NSSF record, and the verified income history that turns an invisible casual into a bankable, credit-worthy person.
The pattern is the same across all six directorates: a platform captures the invisible worker, the payment documents them, and the advisory layer keeps it compliant. That is how Basket turns precarious, unrecorded labour into work that is decent, traceable and compliant — one worker, one payment, one record at a time.
Basket Advisory was founded by Kennedy Nyabwala, a Kampala-based commercial operator and serial entrepreneur. He is a founder in the truest sense — someone who conceives ventures, assembles the teams and tools to deliver them, and operates them in the real Ugandan market. He is not the engineer writing every line of code; he is the builder who turns a market problem into a working company.
Today, Kennedy advises and works alongside some of the most interesting companies operating in Uganda and East Africa. He consults for Xente, a Bank of Uganda-licensed B2B fintech handling business payments and spend management. In agribusiness, he works with Inputi, an agritech marketplace connecting farmers to inputs and agri-finance, and advises UNADA, the national association of agro-input dealers, on unlocking credit for last-mile distribution. He also partners with Skooli Africa, a school-supplies e-commerce platform — and through Basket Consulting he supports a wider set of fintech, edtech, NGO and agribusiness organisations on revenue strategy, partnerships and market entry.
That advisory work is built on a decade of operating experience. Kennedy founded Bwala Africa, a last-mile logistics marketplace that scaled across Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda with hundreds of SME partners and international investment. He has led commercial and supply-chain operations at companies including MarketForce (B2B commerce), Traders of Africa (cross-border e-commerce), Copia (rural e-commerce) and OLX (online marketplaces) — across Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Nigeria. It is this combination — operator who has built and run businesses, and advisor who now helps others do the same — that defines how Basket Advisory works.
Based in Kampala, working across Uganda's fintech, agribusiness, education and NGO sectors.
Consults for Bank of Uganda-licensed fintechs, agritech platforms and donor-funded programmes.
Operating experience across Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Nigeria.
Founder of Bwala Africa and Basket Advisory; a builder of ventures, teams and tools.
Kennedy holds an MBA from KCA University and a Bachelor of Business Administration (Marketing & IT) from Maseno University.
Basket Advisory is founder-led and deliberately lean, growing a team around the functions that matter most to delivering our model. These are the roles we are building out as we scale — each one combining sector knowledge with hands-on execution.
Runs payroll operations for casual and permanent workers, and keeps clients PAYE, NSSF and labour-law compliant.
Owns the credit-scoring models and the income-data layer that turns informal workers into bankable profiles.
Mobilises farmers, designs produce consolidation, and structures agri-finance and offtake partnerships.
Drives compliance research, financial modelling, donor proposals and the evidence behind our advisory work.
Builds relationships with banks, development partners and the field agents who reach the last mile.
Builds and maintains the in-house platforms — Payroll, Books, Jirani, Tajiri and BwalaPay.
Interested in joining? We're always open to talented people who share the mission. Get in touch →
Everything we recommend to clients, we build and use ourselves. When we advise a business on payroll compliance, we do it on the same Basket Payroll platform we've built. When we talk about reaching informal workers or building credit profiles, it's grounded in the BwalaPay and field tools we operate. This is the difference between a consultancy that hands you a report and one that hands you working systems — we are an operator's firm, not a theorist's.
Credibility over claims. We'd rather show you a working tool and a real track record than a glossy promise. That principle runs through everything on this site — from the free calculators anyone can use, to the honest way we describe what we do and don't do.
Whether you need payroll handled, payments streamlined, or advisory grounded in real operating experience — we're ready to help.
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