Farmers’ lawyers win innovation contest

The team behind Puliida, which offers legal services to farmers and agribusinesses, with the award they won. PHOTO BY EDGAR R. BATTE

On Friday evening, six highly promising entrepreneurs pitched their ideas on ways they can come up with justice solutions to a local problem as part of the HiiL Justice Accelerator.

The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) is a not-for-profit institution based in The Hague, The Netherlands, and is driven to make justice work for people through new technologies, cutting-edge knowledge on conflict resolution, and new forms of organisation and governance.

Carefully selected
Puliida, a not-for-profit social enterprise that empowers small-scale farmers, small agribusiness and green enterprises with legal support services, won the HiiL Justice Accelerator.

It beat off competition from 400 applications from all over the world, of which 70 were shortlisted.

The semi-finalists that were carefully selected took part in an online campaign in order to gather votes for their innovation and were reviewed by an expert soundboard.
The team leader, Moses Mugisha, explains that Puliida consists of a network of activist lawyers who volunteer to provide legal assistance for farmers and agribusinesses.

“Though we don’t refuse donations, our social enterprise business model is self-sustaining. It relies on partnerships, pro-active farmers and agribusiness community and army of lawyers,” Mugisha explains.

In the competition, Puliida won €16,000 (Shs 60.9m).

In the pitch presentation, he pointed out their partnerships with the following organisations.
Agriculture Innovations for Sustainable Development Uganda (AISUD), a micro-finance which operates in Wakiso, Mpigi and Masaka—for legal support services to its clients on agribusiness loans.

Namulonge Savings and Cooperative Society—to advise its members involved in organic farming.
Consortium for enhancing University Responsiveness to Agribusiness Development (Curad)—with legal support to incubatees.
Action Aid Uganda—to offer services under its livelihood programme.

Improved pitching
In addition, Mugisha spelt out: “Very important is that the project has capacity to raise funds out of its services. A small fee charged on a large group can tremendously be a game changer. Our innovation is scalable. With lawyers and law firms located in most urban centres, we look at partnering with them and get paid for services rendered per file allocated.”

Nathalie Dijkman, leader on innovations and impact programme at HiiL, praised the pitching process.
“You see the development these entrepreneurs go through from the first practice dry-run to the real pitch in front of the jury.

They improved their pitches over two days that it made me proud to see them at the Boostcamp. There is some amazing talent here that we are now discovering, and what we saw at the Boostcamp was only the tip of the iceberg of what Uganda has to offer,” she observes.

According to a 2015 survey by HiiL, the justice system in Uganda is complex to navigate and expensive. In many cases, it is not capable of producing fair outcomes.

“At Puliida, we believe that in order for communities to get out of poverty and adapt to climate change, farmers and low-income agri-preneurs should access the same range of professional services other businesses routinely obtain, including legal support and advisory,” Mugisha pitched.

HiiL’s survey also observes that farmers and agribusiness Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) enter transactions without legal support due to the high cost of legal consultations and absence of lawyers in rural areas.

Dijkman adds that justice innovators like Puliida are a rare breed who have a passion for social impact, and usually are tired of the rigid justice systems, being slow and inefficient.

She says that innovators like Puliida needs exposure to international expertise, more collaborations withother incubators, for example renowned institutions in the US, such as in Silicon Valley, and access funding to keep up their teams and spaces.