Women can count on the majority factor

What you need to know:

  • THE KNIGHT. Bobby Juuko Kimbugwe is the executive director Pure Grow Africa Ltd, an agribusiness company that promotes organic farming and provides solutions to farmers from the garden to the market, writes Godfrey Lugaaju

Tell me briefly about yourself
I am an entrepreneur, philanthropist and loving father. I’m energised by challenges and pride myself in building great relationships with my clients, a person who values other people’s qualities and contributions. I also believe that being charitable is a quality, not something to show off about. I have a weakness for children and love spending time with them.

Are you a farmer?
(Laughs) I will say I’m a corporate farmer who is involved in farming practices. I advocate for the use of organic fertilisers for best farming produce.

Why advocate for organics?
Through my exposure in travels, I have found out that most countries are 100 per cent getting away from the use of chemicals but with good yields.

Does it mean you are against the use of artificial fertilisers?
No, I’m not because in most cases they are unavoidable. They have been here for long and we still have a long way to educate the public about their advantages and disadvantages. Not all of them are bad, but farmers need to know what is good for them.

What inspired you to start Pure Grow Africa?
I wanted to promote farmers who were supplying me with produce. They were ignorant about most farm oriented programmes. They complained of buying fake inputs and also lacked information on how to get agricultural financing. I felt that just buying their produce would not be enough. I set up this initiative to address their issues.

What are you doing to empower farmers?
I work with farmers from the grass roots, training them on what they can do to get profits, creating forums to inform them on how to improve their produce. I also recommend and distribute authentic inputs to farmers. I do farmer advisory services and constantly engage with stakeholders in the agribusiness sector and give feedback to farmers.

Women participate a lot in agriculture but do not reap as much, what are your views on this?
I believe as a country, we still lack appreciation of the role played by women in agriculture and as producers of wealth. We have constantly underestimated their importance in the agricultural sector and this has got to change soon if we are to see improvements in household incomes because women hold a key to it.

In your interaction with women in agriculture what can you say is their biggest challenge or pitfall?
Lack of access and control over land, limited financial capacity, discrimination and other disadvantages targeted to their gender. Also, illiteracy mostly among rural women hampers them from participating in trainings which would have improved their agricultural skills thus their inability to compete with their male counterparts who have had more knowledge on the subject than them.

How is your organisation reaching out to women?
We encourage women to participate in forums that improve their skills and also provide more information that can help make their agricultural enterprises profitable. We are also currently working with some financial institutions to design loans that are farmer-friendly which will be accessed by women and other farmers we recommend to them.

If you headed the agriculture ministry, where would you focus your efforts?
I would fight tooth and nail for a big percentage budget allocation to the agricultural sector since it contributes highly to the country’s GDP.
I would streamline the prices on agricultural commodities to ensure farmers are not cheated and also have markets where they too have access to the general market and not brokerage.
I would still clean-up projects such as NAADS as they are not pro-farmer and also remove all taxes on all sorts of agricultural inputs and machines.

What advice do you have for women who are participating in agriculture?
They should embrace the challenges of being a minority as a gender but use the advantages of being a majority in numbers of people participating in agriculture to connect with each other and form beneficial social networks where they can get access to knowledge, finance, markets and opportunities collectively.

Quick Bio

Away from your agricultural world, what kind of man are you?
I’m a loving parent and shrewd person on the outside but a kind person on the inside. I love sports and I’m a big fan of Formula One and Manchester United. I also love reading and travelling.

What would you do differently with your life if you were not into this?
I’m living what I wanted to be. I had a lot of passion in social service; I cannot change anything about me but can only do better for I believe nothing is impossible for a willing heart.

Tell me a bit about your family?
I’m a father of three beautiful children; Jaimah Destah Moonlight, Shaquelle Malik Sunshine and Zoey Venus Golden. They are my most important possession in the world and to me anything else is a bonus.