The 20/20 blog series, jointly authored by the Mastercard Foundation Fund for Rural Prosperity (FRP) and Rural and Agricultural Finance Learning Lab (the Lab), shares learnings and insights from the FRP portfolio of challenge fund winners. FRP supports businesses that are developing new products, services, or processes that can increase access to finance for rural people in sub-Saharan Africa. The second blog in the series explores lessons from Ibero Uganda.
Ibero Uganda is part of the Neumann Kaffee Gruppe based in Hamburg, Germany. Ibero Uganda exports quality Ugandan coffees, with warehouses and processing facilities in Kampala and out-stations in all major coffee-producing regions of Uganda. Ibero provides farmers with an ecosystem of complementary services including access to agronomic training, inputs, and markets. In 2017, Ibero was awarded US$1 million by the Mastercard Foundation Fund for Rural Prosperity to set up a Farmer Services Unit (FSU) within its trading operation to provide inputs and loans (a fertilizer advance and a cash advance) to smallholder coffee farmers in Uganda.
