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Engineer Aisha Kigongo living a farming dream
Some of the Friesian cows on Aisha Kigongo’s farm. Inset, Kigongo with the hay she feeds her animals. PHOTO/EDGAR R BATTE
When Aisha Kigongo quit a job paying her about Shs6m a month to venture into agribusiness, most people including her father thought she had gotten it all wrong. But determination knows no borders and almost five years down the line, the 36-years-old is running a booming agribusiness that she is now an employer.
“Many people including parents did not expect me to resign from a well-paying job and undertake such a risky business where everything is determined by market forces of demand and supply, but look at where I am now,” says Kigongo whose career was looking rosy as a IT director at IBM, a company that manages designs.
Background
A graduate in computer engineering from the Grambling State University and a master's in information management and systems from University of California at Berkeley, Kigongo developed a passion for agriculture when she visited Senegal. She says she has no regrets choosing to switch to a career in agriculture. “I realised that there was a big opportunity in agribusiness, especially mixed farming while on an assignment in Senegal in 2017. I visited several farms and saw an opportunity which could be replicated in Uganda,” says Kigongo who runs Gomba Farm in Kyevunza Village.
Inspiration
“Upon graduation I worked for IBM. I did my graduate studies and got interested in social enterprises doing work in Africa. One of those doing social enterprises was an organisation called myAgro which works with farmers using a platform that allows them saving for seed and fertiliser by paying through the mobile platform in little increments. As the interim IT director, I was tasked with the design, test, implementation and rollout of the platform to the users,” Kigongo reveals. Through that work, she found herself leaving the US to Mali, Senegal with MyAgro and got in touch with the farmers. As she interacted with farmers, she appreciated the issues they grappled with, including their search for genuine fertilisers, seeds and the harvests.
Starting
“The areas in which they farm have a dry climate, so seeing all that they go through and are still able to earn a living through agriculture, left me challenged because I come from a country (Uganda) that has plenty of rain with nearly three seasons in a year. Other African countries are not green like Uganda, so that one interested me to join agriculture,” the computer scientist partly explains her motivation for joining agriculture.
Step by step
“I chose to start step by step. Up to now, I sometimes go to bed very late reading up on, for example, the cause of death of a calf on the farm,” she explains. When Kigongo returned to Uganda in 2017, she talked to her father about her interest in acquiring land for farming. He was surprised, and thought it quite unthinkable for a woman to do farming on a large scale.
Kigongo explains how she grows soybeans at her farm in Gomba.
He laughed and asked her whether she was sure she wanted to do agriculture. After her insistence and in spite of his doubts, he allocated her his land in Gomba which she had initially inspected for him prior to its acquisition.
But the beginning was not a bed of roses. Just like all entrepreneurs, farmers require start-up capital and extra money set aside for emergencies. “The advantage is I had land given to me by my father. On the land, I accommodated food crops, dairy cattle under zero-grazing, beef cattle, and other micro-investments to create a solid base for a living,” says Kigongo.
Mixed farming
Today, she rears 286 cattle for beef on 325 acres, a banana plantation of 10 acres, a coffee plantation of 18 acres. She rears some goats for a friend. “I started with around 50 Ankole cows. I rear the long-horned Ankole cows for beef because they are resistant to diseases. I also have Brahman crossbreeds, Friesians and Borans,” she says.
She concentrated her farming efforts around beef cattle because they do not require a lot of work to rear.
“It is good business. The animals are good and fit for our climate. They do not require high maintenance such as is the case with dairy animals,” the farmer elaborately explains her choice for choosing beef over dairy cattle farming.
Marketing
She sells the beef to the City Abattoir situated along Old Port bell Road in Kampala as well as individual buyers who visit and buy cattle at the farm. In determining the price, Kigongo considers factors like the size of the cow and the market price of meat per kilogramme.
Value addition, agro-tourism
She plans to add value addition to the beef as well venturing into dairy farming and agro-tourism. At the moment, she is focussed on laying down a strong foundation for the farm whose land proportion is 40 percent underutilisation.
She is a beneficiary of a synergetic partnership between the National Animal Genetic Resources Centre and Data Bank (Nagric&DB) and European Union (EU) under the Mobip project for Provision of Community-Centred Artificial Insemination Services and Multiple Ovulation Embryo Transfer program with the use if Al synchronisation and Multi Ovulation hormones.
Insemination
The farmer first partnered with the E.U through Nagric&DB last May. They inseminated 55 cattle.
“I am excited and looking forward to further cooperating with them. Artificial insemination is one of the key things the government comes out to support farmers,” she observes.
Ideally, each insemination would have cost her Shs1m per cow. With her herd, she would have spent Shs55m in addition to inviting a doctor, pay labour and pray for insemination to be successful, otherwise if unsuccessful, the doctor would have to return which would mean making a fresh payment for new stock of semen and the rest of the costs.
She adds, “Imagine a farmer with one cow, and what that would mean to them in terms of the transportation of a doctor to inseminate one cow? Financial tracking is key to make it work so any savings are appreciated. When I started out, I considered the available Farm Management Systems to find out which one fits my environment.”
Mentorship
Part of her mentorship circle includes farmers within and outside her immediate space. Whenever she has a question, she reaches out to the Dairy Farmers Network (DAFAN) and dairy farmers such as Jolly Kabirizi, a practicing academic researcher who openly shares information on farmer platforms like WhatsApp groups.
“Dr Kabirizi is an animal nutritionist. She is a very special woman, one of the few people I found willing to share her information, and knowledge that she has especially about animal nutrition without expecting anything back but just for the love of animals and their welfare,” the founder and director of Gomba Farm, explains.
A few things haven’t worked as well for Kigongo. “Cur coffee is still young. We grow Robusta coffee. But as for the bananas, they have not thrived very well especially during the long dry periods in our region. We planted the local ones such as Nakitebe, Kibuzi, and a few of Mpologoma, because the rains haven’t been very good despite a lot of dung we take and put in the garden. Cattle have worked very well and perennial crops such as maize and soyabeans have worked well,” she adds.
Marketing
Aisha Kigongo sells the beef to the City Abattoir situated along Old Port bell Road in Kampala as well as individual buyers who visit and buy cattle at the farm. In determining the price, Kigongo considers factors such as the size of the cow and the market price of meat per kilogramme.
Capital
Her initial capital, she says, went into the construction of a kraal and shed structure to protect the animals and banana against pests and diseases and a drip system to ensure a steady supply of water.
