In Uganda, 89% of citizens are smallholder farmers. They produce 69% of the country’s GDP. And every planting season, many of them gamble. Without reliable access to quality seeds and inputs — or the capital to afford them — farmers plant with whatever they have. Crop yields stay low. Incomes stay thin. When drought or locusts hit, there is no buffer. The cycle repeats.

Microfinance exists, but debt is a poor tool for an input whose return comes six months later and depends on rainfall. Banks are too distant and too expensive. The farmer is left to figure it out alone.

Ogwal Joseph noticed that the problem wasn’t the seed — it was the system for paying for it.

In 2017 he launched Agro Supply with a model built around mobile layaway: farmers save toward their inputs over time, receive them at planting, and pay the balance from their harvest. No debt. No interest. No middleman. Just a way to invest in the next season rather than scramble for it.

Alongside the inputs, Agro Supply provides training — teaching farmers how to get more from every kilo of seed they plant. The fastest-growing year in the Africa Eats portfolio happened here: Agro Supply grew from $217,000 in revenues in 2020 to over $1 million in 2021. Nearly five-fold in twelve months.

Agro Supply operates a mobile layaway savings platform that lets Ugandan farmers save and invest in farming inputs — seeds, fertilizer, agrochemicals — without taking on debt.

Its network now reaches over 35,000 smallholder farmers across 40 rural districts, supported by 145 trained village agents who serve as the last-mile link between the company and the farm. Agents distribute inputs, collect savings, and provide extension training in communities that commercial agriculture has never reached.

The model doesn’t give farmers handouts. It gives them a way to invest in themselves.