ACT Fund's First Investment Signals Confidence in Uganda's Transforming Agricultural Sector
Last week marked a significant milestone for both Uganda's agricultural sector and the impact investing landscape, as the Agricultural Commodity Transformation Fund (ACT Fund) announced its inaugural investment: a USD 3 million trade finance facility to Just Know Your Coffee Cup (JKCC) General Supplies Ltd, one of Uganda's largest locally owned coffee exporters.
As someone who has been deeply engaged in Uganda's agribusiness ecosystem for over a decade, I believe this investment speaks volumes about the untapped potential in our agricultural value chains and the catalytic role that impact-driven capital can play in unleashing this potential.
Uganda's Agricultural Landscape: Challenges and Opportunities
Agriculture has long been the backbone of Uganda's economy, employing over 70% of our workforce and accounting for a quarter of our GDP. Yet for too long, our agricultural sector has been held back by low productivity, limited value addition, and vulnerability to climate shocks.
However, in recent years, we have seen promising trends emerge. The government has prioritized agriculture in its national development strategy, with a focus on commercialization, value chain development, and agro-industrialization. Export earnings from crops like coffee, tea, and horticulture have been rising steadily. And there is a growing recognition that Uganda's agriculture sector has vast untapped potential, with abundant arable land, diverse agro-ecological zones, and a young, entrepreneurial population.
Coffee: A Key Driver of Agricultural Transformation
Coffee is a prime example of a crop that embodies both the challenges and opportunities in Uganda's agricultural sector. We are Africa's second-largest coffee exporter after Ethiopia, with over 1.5 million smallholder households engaged in coffee production. Our Arabica and Robusta varieties are suited to different regions of the country and have a loyal following in export markets.
Yet average yields remain well below potential, and many farmers struggle to access the financing, inputs, and training needed to improve quality and productivity. This is where companies like JKCC come in. Founded in 2017, JKCC sources coffee from more than 10,000 smallholder farmers across Central and Western Uganda, and aims to reach 20,000 farmers by 2028. By sourcing directly from smallholder farmers, providing advance financing, and investing in agronomic advice and climate-resilient coffee seedlings, JKCC is not only securing its own supply of high-quality coffee but also driving meaningful improvements in farmer livelihoods and resilience.
The significance of the deal was underscored by ACT Fund Director Michael van den Berg, who described the disbursement of the Fund's first loan as a significant milestone, noting the Fund's pride in making this inaugural investment with JKCC as a respected Ugandan agribusiness.
The Missing Middle: A Financing Opportunity
ACT Fund's investment in JKCC highlights a broader financing gap and opportunity in Uganda's agricultural sector. Agri-SMEs like JKCC play a vital role in connecting smallholder farmers to markets, inputs, and services. Yet they often fall into a "missing middle" between microfinance and large-scale commercial lending, lacking the tailored financial products and ticket sizes they need to grow and drive impact.
By targeting this missing middle with a combination of debt, technical assistance, and value chain partnerships, impact investors like ACT Fund can unlock the growth potential of agri-SMEs and magnify their impact on smallholder livelihoods and sector transformation. And with opportunities across value chains — from coffee to dairy, maize, horticulture, and beyond — and an enabling ecosystem of agtech and fintech innovations, the investment thesis is compelling.
The Role of Technology: Consolidating Produce, Reducing Volatility
One of the hardest problems in this missing middle is logistical, not just financial. Smallholder farmers are dispersed, produce arrives in small and uneven volumes, and prices swing with the season. For an agri-SME like JKCC to guarantee offtake and meet export-grade volumes, it needs to aggregate thousands of farmers reliably — and that is fundamentally a data and coordination challenge.
This is exactly the gap technology can close. Platforms that organise farmers into groups, digitise produce collection, record deliveries and pricing transparently, and consolidate small lots into export volumes give agri-SMEs the visibility they need to plan, finance, and fulfil large contracts.
Jirani — Produce Consolidation & Farmer Mobilisation
Jirani is Basket Advisory's field mobilisation and aggregation platform built for exactly this challenge. It helps agribusinesses and farmer organisations register and group smallholders, coordinate produce collection across districts, track deliveries and pricing, and consolidate volumes into the export-grade lots that buyers and financiers require. By turning dispersed, volatile supply into organised, traceable volume, Jirani strengthens the offtake security that makes agri-finance possible.
Learn more about Jirani →Looking Ahead: Partnerships for Transformation
As we look ahead, I am excited about the potential for Uganda's agri-SMEs to lead the way in building a more sustainable, inclusive, and productive agricultural sector. But unlocking this potential will require more than just capital. It will require multi-stakeholder partnerships that leverage the unique capabilities of government, private sector, civil society, and farming communities.
It will require blended finance structures that balance risks and returns and crowd in diverse sources of capital. And it will require a long-term commitment to walking alongside agri-SMEs and farming households as they navigate the challenges and opportunities ahead.
ACT Fund's investment in JKCC is an important step forward on this journey. It signals confidence not just in one company but in the future of Ugandan agriculture. And it invites all of us to be part of writing the next chapter of inclusive agricultural transformation in Uganda.
Frequently Asked Questions
The Agricultural Commodity Transformation (ACT) Fund is a blended-finance initiative established by the Common Fund for Commodities to close the financing gap facing agri-SMEs that connect smallholder farmers to markets across Africa, Asia and Latin America, combining debt financing with a technical assistance facility.
It refers to agri-SMEs too large for microfinance but too small or seen as too risky for commercial banks. They connect smallholders to markets but lack the tailored products and ticket sizes they need to grow.
Platforms like Jirani aggregate farmers into organised groups, digitise produce collection and pricing, track deliveries, and consolidate volumes into export-grade lots — reducing price volatility for farmers, improving traceability for buyers, and strengthening the offtake security that underpins agri-finance.