Vincent Waiswa Bagiire

Vincent Bagiire is increasing incomes in poor farming communities by using communication technology both to facilitate the sharing of indigenous farming knowledge and to enable poor farmers to obtain better prices for their products.

Vincent has established a network of farmers' groups and a mechanism for knowledge transfer between them to boost the yields from their farms and ultimately to address persistent poverty in rural Uganda. Most farmers rely on indigenous farming methods handed down from generation to generation. Vincent is leveraging modern technology to build a national central database of indigenous farming knowledge, and then organizing farmers into a network to share best practices from across the country. Vincent uses a variety of information and communication technology (ICT) tools such as a website, blog post, and SMS, in addition to printed how-to guides. Monthly in-person exchanges between farmers and an annual knowledge fair also facilitate the flow of agricultural practices across ethnic groups and geographic regions. Vincent's model allows farmers to easily pick up new agricultural methods that can diversify and improve their yields, and to find new solutions to drought, pestilence, or other common threats to agricultural livelihood. Vincent also helps rural farmers sell their products directly to growing urban and foreign markets so they can keep the profits of their labor. With over thirty ethnic groups in Uganda, each with its own indigenous farming methods, Vincent's model has both the space and relevance to grow and spread nationally.