REPARLE

In Uganda, agriculture accounts for 50% of GDP, and 72% of its population of 42m people rely on agriculture for a living. Yet, smallholder farmers face multiple challenges including lack of access to electricity, digital data and markets, meaning they are unable to optimise agricultural practices or process their crops, and suffer low production, high post-harvest losses, and ultimately sell crops at low prices, perpetuating poverty. Our solution combines renewable electricity, agricultural value addition, and digital technologies to provide real-time data to farmers, farmer training and integration into high-value supply chains. It is a circular economy model, whereby we purchase agricultural waste from farmers and use this to generate electricity and produce briquettes for low-carbon cooking fuel. Our solution aims to drive sustainable, low carbon development, resilient food systems and break the cycle of poverty. It has potential to be scaled beyond Uganda and replicated across SSA. 

In Uganda, 72% of the population rely on agriculture for a living, and agriculture accounts for half of GDP. Uganda is the 3rd largest refugee-hosting country in the world (1.35m refugees), with each family given land so they may benefit from agriculture. Rural communities face multiple, but surmountable, barriers to achieving sustainable, resilient, low-carbon food systems:

• Lack of access to low-carbon energy for agri-processing (no electricity access or access to mini-grids reliant on fossil-fuels)-results in low crop yields and quality, high post-harvest losses (40%) due to inefficient handling.
• Lack of access to high-value markets-crops typically do not meet quality standards and are sold at low prices.
• Poor digital infrastructure and digital illiteracy-lack of data (e.g. soil quality) means farmers struggle to optimise agricultural practices, practice inefficient farming that lacks resilience to external variables (e.g. pests, weather).
• Lack of fairness/transparency in pricing-farmer earnings are low due to multiple intermediaries in the value chain; high payment fees; complex/delayed/wrongly-routed payments
• Lack of cold chains for storing/transporting produce.
• High-carbon food consumption-inefficient cookstoves; communities rely on kerosene/diesel/firewood leading to high carbon emissions, deforestation, environmental degradation, and lower local environmental resilience.

These barriers result in low food security and prevent small farmers integration in supply chains.

REPARLE helps smallholder farmers build sustainable, resilient, low-carbon food systems and enter high-value supply chains through:

• Affordable, renewable energy (solar-biomass hybrid with storage)-powers agricultural processing, cold chains, productive and residential needs. Transition to mechanised processing lowers post-harvest losses, reduces waste, increases yields and food security. 
• Agricultural value-addition (e.g. milling, cold storage) powered by low-carbon energy–increases crop quality, enabling farmers to meet standards for high-value supply chains, increasing income. 
• Digital infrastructure (e.g. GPS-equipped UAVs)-facilitates climate-smart agriculture, provides real-time data (e.g. soil quality) to farmers enabling them to adjust agronomic practices to increase yields, efficiency and resilience. REPARLE tracks yields to improve forecasting and negotiations, e.g. for better market prices.
• Outreach/training–to build digital literacy, provide best-practice training for sustainable agriculture. 
• EVs–refrigerated transport moves crops to REPARLE and on to buyers.
• Markets–REPARLE links farmers to high-value markets, with buyers including Coca-Cola.

Our circular economy model minimises waste and supports low-carbon food systems–REPARLE purchases agri-waste from farmers post-processing (e.g. rice husks) and uses it to: produce briquettes, to displace high-carbon cooking fuels (e.g. firewood), reducing deforestation/degradation/social tensions and improving health; power biomass plant. A by-product is biochar, which we purchase from farmers and sell to displace high-carbon fuels in industry.

REPARLE’s beneficiaries are low-income, smallholder farmers in refugee and host communities in rural Uganda. Our goal is to place smallholder farmers front-and-centre so that our solution reflects their needs. REPARLE provides the following impacts:

• Income–access to electricity, digital and agricultural services improves crop quality and yields, increasing the price at which farmers sell crops. Farmers are integrated into high-value markets for long-term recurring sales, with buyers including Coca-Cola.
• Health-REPARLE replaces 100% inefficient cookstoves in target communities, and affordable biomass briquettes reduce smoke inhalation. 
• Social–collection of scarce firewood is a source of tension within communities–biomass briquettes displace firewood in cooking. 
• Education–REPARLE provides farmers with outreach, training and support to increase acres under production, optimise yields, manage businesses, and in digital literacy. Electricity produced can power schools.
• Time for productive uses–access to electricity enables farmers to transition from manual crop harvesting to mechanised processing, saving time, energy, income and reducing post-harvest losses. Briquettes reduce time communities would spend collecting firewood (roundtrips of 12km). 
• Environment-circular economy model lowers carbon emissions, deforestation, degradation and agricultural waste. 
• Empowered communities–REPARLE transforms communities from recipients of aid to economically-empowered communities active in sustainable, income-generating activities.

We use ESIA, surveys and engage communities to assess their needs.

Carbon emissions–renewable energy powers low-carbon agricultural processing. Biomass briquettes and efficient cookstoves replace high-carbon cooking fuel and inefficient stoves. Biochar displaces high-carbon fuels in industry. Briquettes/biochar reduce deforestation/degradation, enhancing environmental resilience.

Waste-mechanised agriculture and digital technologies reduce post-harvest losses; circular-economy model uses agri-waste for electricity generation and cooking fuel.

Resilience–digital technologies, outreach and training enable farmers to adjust practices for resilient production, ensuring no nutrient depletion.

Food security–solution designed to increase crop quality and yield. 

Markets–REPARLE connects farmers to high-value markets. 

Cold chains–EVS and agri-hub provide refrigerated transport/storage.

Target-rural refugee/host community smallholder farmers.

REPARLE is an innovative circular economy model.

We provide a technology-driven solution to sustainable food systems – we leverage bleeding edge digital technologies (blockchain, IoT smart sensors, machine learning, GPS-equipped UAVs) to address market gaps and drive sustainable food systems in an accessible and scalable way. 

We use a renewable energy mini-grid to power agricultural value addition and productive uses, combining solar-biomass and innovate lithium battery storage. This differs from alternative minigrids which typically rely upon fossil fuel back-up, or diesel hybrids, and which typically are unable to power productive uses. EVs are used to provide crop transport and as part of the cold chain, alongside the agricultural processing hub. 

We use a circular economy model which makes use of agricultural waste that is normally disposed of (e.g. rice husks) to produce low-carbon, renewable electricity and clean-cooking fuel. This minimizes waste, displaces high-carbon fuel (e.g. firewood), reduces deforestation/degradation, and generates low-carbon energy. A by-product of this process is biochar, which is sold to displace high-carbon fuels (e.g. charcoal) in industry. Our model lowers social tensions between refugee and host communities, by removing the need for scarce firewood.

We specifically target low-income, refugee and host community rural smallholder farming communities in Africa, and provide them with training and outreach to support their transition to sustainable food producers. Unlike other programs, we transform them from mere recipients of aid to economically empowered communities active in income-generating activities. We integrate farmers into high-value supply chains, and have already confirmed buyers, including Coca-Cola.

REPARLE will apply bleeding-edge digital technologies (blockchain, IoT smart-sensors, machine-learning) to address challenges faced by smallholder farmers and buyers in the supply chain. A digital market-place platform has functions including:

• Farmer registry-verified, traceable farmers;
• Market linkage-connects farmers sourced, aggregated crops to bulk-buyers;
• Digital orders-buyers select preferred delivery/collection location;
• Digital payments-instant, cashless payments in multiple currencies; receipts; reduced fees;
• Digital transaction record including prices available to all farmers-ensures fairness, transparency, trust.

GPS-equipped UAVs enable improved agricultural practices: record farm locations, track yield, provide real-time-information on farmers’ land, crops and variables e.g. soil quality. Digital data is processed by agri-tech software and delivered to farmers via mobile telephones in an easy-to-read format to drive improved/informed agriculture. This will enable farmers to adjust processes to maximise yields, quality and ensure efficient, resilient production. UAVs support irrigation and by spraying herbicides, pesticides, etc. 

REPARLE uses GPS-equipped UAVs and the digital platform to:
• Geolocate and source agricultural produce from farmers;
• Gather data, undertake analysis and design algorithms to predict yields-this helps forecasting and negotiation for better market prices and track biomass yield for electricity/briquette production;
• Optimize collection routes to minimise transportation costs;
• Forecast capacity needs of storage/trucks;
• Collect crop smart-sensor data, e.g. weight, moisture, for quality scoring and pricing;
• Verify farmer identities and ensure payments are routed correctly;
• Verify crops in storage/transport to detect/deter pilferage;
• Verify data that affects pricing

Other technology components include EVs, for crop transport and part of the cold chain; renewable minigrid with storage; agricultural processing technology (e.g. milling equipment). 

Each of the technologies we are incorporating has previously been implemented in different ecosystems in more developed economies. An example is how our project development partner Accenture has deployed similar technology for supply chain management. https://www.accenture.com/us-e... The difference with our solution is that it will integrate different solutions that have worked in other ecosystems, as part of the same holistic solution in a new environment. Accenture's Circular Biorefinery system has worked for a different crop (sugarcane in South Africa) but it will be deployed to serve smallholder farmers for grains, oilseeds and pulses in Uganda and other parts of less developed subsaharan Africa. ·   Blockchain for Good – This is a POV published by Accenture on how social innovation organizations, including philanthropies, NGOs, NPOs, governments and social enterprises, can and should be using blockchain to drive impact an transformation at scale.

·         ID2020:  https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insight-blockchain-id2020. Digital Identity with Blockchain and Biometrics: Extensive work has been done by Accenture, in partnership with Mastercard and Microsoft, to create an open, human-centric approach to identity that better serves the needs of vulnerable and migratory populations, specifically refugees. https://www-sciencedirect-com.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/... Science Direct Journal : A comprehensive review on automation in agriculture using artificial intelligence. Satellite Images are also already being used to support agrictulture:https://earth.esa.int/web/guest/earth-topics/agriculture#:~:text=By%20extension%2C%20satellites%20are%20also,intensive%20and%20efficient%20cultivation%20practices.  https://earthi.space/industrie...   https://www.euspaceimaging.com...   https://www.farmmanagement.pro...

REPARLE drives sustainable, low-carbon, resilient food systems through a technology-driven, scalable model, accessible to farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. 

Currently, smallholder farmers have no energy access for productive uses, or access from minigrids reliant upon high-carbon fossil fuels. Lack of energy access means farmers cannot process their crops, suffer high post-harvest losses, low yields and poor-quality produce. REPARLE provides renewable energy to power agricultural value adding processes, alongside other residential and productive needs. This enables farmers to reduce agricultural losses, improve quality, and sell produce at higher prices. 

Rural farmers are typically reliant on inefficient cookstoves and use high-carbon fuels such as firewood or charcoal. This leads to high carbon emissions, deforestation, environmental degradation and smoke inhalation. REPARLE purchases agricultural waste from farmers post-processing to produce biomass briquettes (and power minigrid), to displace firewood and other cooking fuels. This leads to reduced deforestation, degradation, carbon emissions, social tensions, improved health and income. 

Rural farmers lack access to cold chains for their produce. REPARLE provides refrigerated EVs to transport produce, and refrigerated storage to ensure quality is maintained. 

Smallholder farmers lack access to high value markets. Energy for agri-processing enables farmers to produce higher quality crops which meet quality standards of high-value buyers. Our digital platform provides data to enable farmers to improve management practices to produce high yields of quality crops, and REPARLE provides training and support, and connects them directly to markets.  The digital platform enables REPARLE to aggregate crops from smallholder farmers and negotiate good market prices with large buyers. This leads to higher and constant monetary income for farmers. 

Ultimately, REPARLE’s model results in benefits to: community health (reduced smoke inhalation from biomass briquettes); food security (increased crop yields/quality); environment (lower carbon emissions and deforestation from renewable energy and briquettes); reduced waste (reduced post-harvest losses and use of agricultural waste); income (access to high-value markets, improved agricultural produce, purchase of agri-waste); resilience (digital platform and training enables farmers to adjust operations based on informed understanding of external variables); education (training in digital/financial literacy); local economic development (integration of smallholder farmers in high-value supply chains); and quality of life.

Since 2018, REPARLE has built a successful business of rural smallholder agriculture aggregation, value addition and market linkages in Northern Uganda, serving 6,000 rural refugee and host community farmers. Our initial Ugandan supply-chain is defined, and we have 10 bulk-buyers which we already supply with aggregated, processed agricultural produce from farmers in these low-income settlements.

In the next twelve months, we expect to be serving at least 120,000 farmers, using the digital platform to geo-locate and source 2.5 million t/year of crops. We are currently engaging 65,000 farmers across 15 districts in Northern Uganda, delivering outreach and support, and we expect to expand the number of farmers that we are engaging and deploy REPARLE in these communities. 

In five years, we expect to scale up to 1,000,000 farmers in Uganda (25%), and subsequently across Sub-Saharan Africa. We have 25 sites already identified for future deployment of our business model. 

Over the next 12 months our goals are to:

1) Grow to impact at least 120,000 rural refugee and host community smallholder farmers in Northern Uganda, and facilitate their access to aggregation and agricultural value addition;
2) Sustainable high-value market integration of 120,000 farmers across over 600,000 acres, for long-term recurring sales for a target of 2.5m tons of grain per annum, leading to a permanently increased income among targeted farming communities, food security and lower carbon emissions. Concurrently give buyers access to high quality, locally sourced smallholder-cultivated agricultural produce.
3) Product and technology: fully build the digital platform to enable smallholder farmers to engage in contract farming for guaranteed markets with fair and transparent pricing, giving buyers access to reliable, high-quality, scalable aggregated supply. Demonstrate the solution is scalable. 
4) Register and onboard smallholder farmers in rural communities onto the digital platform, training on financial and digital literacy.

Our five-year vision is to replicate REPARLE and scale to integrate 1,000,000 farmers. We plan to do this by: 1) engaging communities across different regions in Uganda; 2) growing our organisational partnerships who reach refugee and smallholder farming communities; 3) networking at events to facilitate new partnerships and growth opportunities. The relative uptake of digital technologies among women in farming in SSA is low. 40-50% of farmers in SSA are women, yet only 25% are registered users of digital agricultural solutions. As we scale we plan to explicitly raise capacity of female farmers.

1) Securing investment – given our scaling goals, we need to raise funding to roll out our model in the next twelve months. This has been proving particularly challenging given the current coronavirus pandemic, as many grant giving organisations and investors are redirecting funds towards COVID-19 related projects or delaying or halting the distribution of funds. Solve’s connections will be invaluable to ensuring access to a broader pool of financial resources. 

2) Digital agriculture in East Africa is still at demonstration stage and so we anticipate some technical barriers within the next twelve months as we develop our digital platform, and some cultural barriers as we onboard farmers and buyers to the platform. 

3) International expansion: our solution has potential to scale not only within Uganda but across Sub-Saharan Africa in the next five years. It would be great to explore this opportunity through solve.  

1) Securing investment – we are continuing to undertake meetings virtually via zoom with partners and prospective investors, and applying for financial resources to help us scale. Once REPARLE is fully operational, the revenue generated will be used to support further scale-up.

2) We have expert support in the digital technology space, from organisations including Modularity Grid, Accenture and technical experts from Waterloo University Institute of Sustainable Energy (WISE). Through their expertise, we expect to be able to overcome any technical barriers associated with the digital aspect of our solution. We will provide training, outreach and ongoing support to farmers and buyers in our target communities increase digital and financial literacy. 
3) We have interest from organisations including Solidaridad to scale-up across Sub-Saharan Africa, and we will continue to engage with these prospective partners with a view to replicate REPARLE in other countries. 

33 million farmers registered for digital agricultural services in SSA, and statistics project 200 million will be registered by 2030. REPARLE’s model meets a niche by addressing the entire value chain from cultivation training, through to aggregation, market access and sales, while concurrently being a marketplace to connect farmers to more products and services to improve their productivity. 

12 full-time staff

Led by repatriated Ugandan refugees, REPARLE has the knowledge, networks, experience and passion to deliver our solution to smallholder refugee and host communities, while supporting the transition to a low-carbon, sustainable and resilient future. 

Peter Nyeko, CEO, has ten+ years’ experience and is an expert on energy access in Africa, leading off-grid biomass prototype development for GIZ-GmBH. He authored various publications including the Economist White Paper (2016) “Power up: delivering renewable energy in Africa” and is experienced in clean energy investment from roles at CF partners. Peter has business experience having founded a business in genset sales and transport, an Meng in Aerospace Engineering from Bristol University, and is a Summit Fellow.

Our board includes Elizabeth Nyeko, who has business and energy access experience having run Modularity Grid (a spin-out company from Airbus) and the creation of the company’s proprietary concept of a cloud-based platform which enables tracking and prediction capabilities to improve service delivery in rural smallholder farming communities in Africa. Her work earned her a position in the top 2018 Innovators under 35 by MIT-Technology & Africa’s Top 10 Female innovators by World Economic Forum. Our investors include Robin Tucker, an expert in technology, space, environment and project strategy. 

Our team includes expertise in all aspects of project development, engineering expertise including biomass gasification plant and briquetting-machine set-up, agricultural supply chain management, and environmental management. This was gained from roles including AfD, GIZ-Energising Development, Carbon Trust, and universities including University of Oxford, Kings College London and Makerere. 

REPARLE current has five partners for technology development and piloting:

• Modularity Grid: a spin-out from Airbus, Modularity Grid are UK-based designers of a cloud-based platform that couples predictive modelling of electricity data with dynamic control and management of electricity distribution. They bring expertise in IoT, real-time data analytics and machine learning, artificial intelligence and hybrid mini-grids;
• Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (IIE) at Loughborough University: focused on business model innovation and analysis and monitoring of gender factors affecting innovation;
• Accenture: experts in blockchain technology and project development partners
• Waterloo WISE – provide support on technical aspects of the project;
• Brill Power – a spin-out company from the University of Oxford, they are leading developers of intelligent battery management and control technology designed to increase the lifetime and reliability of lithium-ion battery packs for stationary energy storage and electric vehicles. They use a combination of hardware and software that optimises the use of lithium-ion cells within a battery pack, delivering benefits to battery lifetime, reliability, safety and sustainability.

Modularity Grid will lead on the design and prototyping of the digital platform for end-to-end management of sourcing, storage and distribution of agricultural products, along with Accenture. 

REPARLE brings expertise in on the ground market knowledge and networks as well as ongoing agribusiness activities focused on end-to-end management of sourcing, quality control, storage and distribution of crops through contract farming arrangements with smallholder farmers.

We sell agricultural processing services (cold chains, milling, etc.) to farmers (<$100/ton). We create value by enabling farmers to produce higher quality crops that they can sell for higher prices to large buyers and generate increased incomes.  

We integrate farmers into high-value supply chains and sell aggregated crops to bulk-buyers (c.$400/ton). We create value by providing market access to smallholder and refugee farming communities, allowing them to generate long-term, recurring sales. 

We sell biomass briquettes to farming communities (<$200/ton). We create value by producing briquettes from agricultural waste that we buy from the same communities. This generates a secondary revenue stream for farmers (in addition to crop sale) and displaces high-carbon cooking fuels such as kerosene and firewood. By displacing firewood, this reduces deforestation and environmental degradation, saves time that farmers would be spending collecting firewood, reduces social tensions for scarce firewood, and provides health benefits through reduced smoke inhalation.

We buy biochar from communities (produced burning biomass briquettes) and sell to industry (<$100/ton). We create value by generating further income for farmers and displacing high-carbon fuels from industry. 

We sell electricity to communities (<$0.25/kWh). We create value by producing entirely renewable-generated electricity, that is affordable, reliable, and able to support productive uses. This results in lower carbon emissions than alternative mini-grids (typically reliant upon fossil fuels), lower cost (alternatives often rely on expensive diesel) and productive uses (alternatives typically cater for basic residential needs). 

We sell carbon offsets (<$16/ton) via projectwren to fund scale-up and support the low-carbon transition. 

As technology forms the integral part of our solution, risks include ensuring our digital platform functions effectively, and technological scale-up. We hope to become part of SOLVE’s network to receive mentoring and guidance from experienced advisors who can provide strategic insights, and to benefit from SOLVE’s technical resources. 

Given our funding requirements for development of our digital platform and subsequent scale-up, being part of SOLVE’s network and connections will be invaluable in terms of enabling us to connect with potential investors and access financial resources. We hope to work with SOLVE’s advisors to explore potential financial opportunities or options that we may not have previously considered to enable us to achieve our goals. Given SOLVE’s call for solutions to achieve food security and sustainable, low carbon food systems is aligned with our model, we believe that you would connect us to investors who share our values. 

We hope to scale our solution beyond Uganda, across other countries in SSA in subsequent years. Being part of SOLVE’s network will help us to meet potential partners in those countries with whom we can replicate REPARLE, and we would welcome SOLVE’s guidance on building an international company.

We would be grateful for SOLVE’s mentoring on other aspects of our solution, including technology, supply chains, market engagement, scaling and best practices. We are also excited about the opportunity to be part of a network of other organisations developing similar projects and working with similar communities with whom we can exchange learnings and advice.

We seek the partnership with University Departments and Innovation Labs to help us design more bleeding edge technology solutions to optimise our work and test and improve our exisiting solutions.

Partnership with the MIT D-Lab https://d-lab-mit-edu.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/ - We seek the partnership with the MIT D-Lab do help us design the solutions and test them

Led by repatriated Ugandan refugees, we target our solution on supporting rural refugee and host farming communities in Africa. We aim to turn refugee farmers from recipients of aid to economically empowered participants active in income-generating activities. We create value for refugees in the following ways:

• Health–biomass briquettes and clean cookstoves reduce smoke inhalation and exposure to emissions;
• Additional sources/increased income–improved crop yields; improved crop quality through access to processing services enables sale at higher prices;
• Integration–of refugee farmers into high-value markets for sustainable, recurring sales; support economic integration and improved natural resource management with the aim of generating sustainable socio-economic opportunities, recognising link between poverty and natural resource dependency;
• Employment–new opportunities provide stable source of income;
• Cost savings–reduced expenditure on energy;
• Time–displacing firewood enables time spent collecting wood to be allocated to productive activities;
• Self-reliance- improve resilient agricultural livelihoods to promote self-reliance, well-being, sustainable food and nutrition security. Agricultural livelihoods are a key pathway for resilience as 95% refugees and 97% host community households identify as being engaged in agricultural activities;
• Resilience-REPARLE provides outreach and support to communities to increase resilience through access to sustainable agricultural livelihood opportunities;
• Adaptive capacity-support climate-smart agriculture through digital services and training – known to increase resilience;
• Knowledge-training on social/economic/environmental benefits of clean-cooking solutions and improved agricultural practices;
• Financial inclusion–market access, digital payments, access to bank loans.

We will use this prize to engage more refugee smallholder farmers and replicate REPARLE in other refugee communities across SSA. 

We use an innovative biomass briquetting machine to turn agricultural waste from smallholder farmers into low-carbon cooking fuels to be used in clean cookstoves. The briquettes are sold to communities to displace alternative, high-carbon cooking fuels such as kerosene, charcoal and firewood. As women and girls are primarily tasked with cooking, they are impacted in four main ways: 1) improved health through reduced smoke inhalation; 2) increased time for productive uses, as our briquettes remove the need to collect firewood (roundtrips can be 12km); 3) reduced social tensions– scarce firewood can result in tensions between  and within refugee and host communities and is known to cause social tensions; 4) reduced risk associated with firewood collection.

A key component of our solution is the use of digital technology and a digital platform marketplace. This has several uses including providing data to farmers to help improve agronomic processes, connecting farmer produce to buyers, enabling forecasting of crop yields for better price negotiation, etc. The uptake of digital technologies among women in farming communities in Uganda and across SSA is low. 40-50% of farmers in SSA are women, yet only 25% are registered users of digital agricultural solutions. As we scale, we plan to explicitly raise capacity of female farmers, increase their digital literacy and onboard them onto the platform.  

Both of these components to our solution are designed to improve quality of life for women, and we hope to use this prize to fund their development and scale-up. 

We provide a technology-driven solution to sustainable food systems – we leverage bleeding edge digital technologies (blockchain, IoT smart sensors, machine learning, GPS-equipped UAVs) to address market gaps and challenges faced by smallholder refugee and host community farmers and buyers in the supply chain, in order to drive sustainable food systems in an accessible and scalable way. 

A digital market-place platform has functions including:
• Farmer registry-verified, traceable farmers;
• Market linkage-connects farmers sourced, aggregated crops to bulk-buyers;
• Digital orders-buyers can select preferred delivery/collection location;
• Digital payments-instant, cashless payments in multiple currencies; receipts; reduced fees;
• Digital transaction record including prices available to all farmers-ensures fairness, transparency, trust.

GPS-equipped UAVs enable improved agricultural practices: record farm locations, track yield, provide real-time-information on farmers’ land, crops and variables such as soil quality. Digital data is processed by agri-tech software and delivered to farmers via mobile telephones in an easy-to-read format to drive improved/informed agriculture. This enables farmers to adjust processes to maximise yields, quality and ensure efficient, resilient production. UAVs support irrigation and by spraying herbicides, pesticides, etc. 

REPARLE uses GPS-equipped UAVs and the digital platform to:
• Geolocate and source agricultural produce from farmers;
• Gather data, undertake analysis and design algorithms to predict yields-this helps forecasting and negotiation for better market prices and track biomass yield for electricity/briquette production;
• Optimize collection routes to minimise transportation costs;
• Forecast capacity needs of storage/trucks;
• Collect crop smart-sensor data, e.g. weight, moisture, for quality scoring and pricing;
• Verify farmer identities and ensure payments are routed correctly;
• Verify crops in storage/transport to detect/deter pilferage;
• Verify data that affects pricing

These technologies therefore have multiple benefits for refugee and host communities, including:
• Increased income – digital platform provides real-time-data to farmers in order to adjust their agricultural management practices and produce higher yields of improved quality crops;
• Integration–of refugee farmers into high-value markets through the digital platform for sustainable, recurring sales; 
• Cost savings – digital payments enable instant payments and reduced transaction fees, as well as transparency and fairness of pricing; REPARLE will use GPS-equipped UAVs to track yields to improve negotiations for better market prices for farmers;
• Adaptive capacity-support climate-smart agriculture through digital services– known to increase resilience;
• Financial inclusion–market access, digital payments, access to bank loans.
• Renewable energy – REPARLE will use digital technologies to predict biomass yields for renewable energy generation.

These technologies are a key component of our solution and will be instrumental in the social and economic empowerment of refugee and host farming communities. Our technologies are still at development stage - we would use the AI prize to fully develop our digital technologies, get them fully operational with no technical bugs, pilot and deploy them in our projects in refugee communities. Our technologies will be fully functional as individual components and replicable, and so we hope that in time they will have impact beyond Uganda, across farming communities elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa and beyond. 

REPARLE aims to provide positive social, economic and environmental impacts to millions of refugee and host community farmers in rural Africa. Our solution is designed to transform these communities from mere recipients of aid to economically empowered communities active in income-generating activities. 

We are a for-profit company, with an operating revenue of 10%. Our model is a replicable solution combining:
• Affordable, renewable energy (solar-biomass hybrid with storage) –powers agricultural processing, cold chains, productive and residential needs. Transition to mechanised processing lowers post-harvest losses, reduces waste, increases yields and food security. 
• Agricultural value-addition (e.g. milling, cold storage) powered by low-carbon energy–increases crop quality, enabling farmers to meet standards for high-value supply chains, increasing income. 
• Digital infrastructure (e.g. GPS-equipped UAVs)-facilitates climate-smart agriculture, provides real-time data (e.g. soil quality) to farmers enabling them to adjust agronomic practices to increase yields, efficiency and resilience. REPARLE tracks yields to improve forecasting and negotiations, e.g. for better market prices.
• Outreach/training–to build digital literacy, provide best-practice training for sustainable agriculture. 
• EVs–refrigerated transport moves crops to REPARLE and on to buyers.
• Markets–REPARLE links farmers to high-value markets, with buyers including Coca-Cola.
• Circular economy model minimises waste and supports low-carbon food systems–REPARLE purchases agri-waste from farmers post-processing (e.g. rice husks) and uses it to: produce briquettes, to displace high-carbon cooking fuels (e.g. firewood), reducing deforestation/degradation/social tensions and improving health; power biomass plant. A by-product is biochar, which we purchase from farmers and sell to displace high-carbon fuels in industry.

It offers multiple positive impacts including:
• Income–access to electricity, digital and agricultural services improves crop quality and yields, increasing the price at which farmers sell crops. Farmers are integrated into high-value markets for long-term recurring sales, with buyers including Coca-Cola.
• Health-REPARLE replaces 100% inefficient cookstoves in target communities, and affordable biomass briquettes reduce smoke inhalation. 
• Social–collection of scarce firewood is a known source of tension within communities – biomass briquettes displace the need for firewood in cooking. 
• Education–REPARLE provides farmers with outreach, training and support to increase acres under production, optimise yields, manage their businesses, and in digital literacy. Electricity produced can power schools.
• Time for productive uses–access to electricity enables farmers to transition from manual crop harvesting to mechanised processing, saving time, energy, income and reducing post-harvest losses. Briquettes reduce time communities would spend collecting firewood (roundtrips of 12km). 
• Environment-circular economy model lowers carbon emissions, deforestation, degradation and agricultural waste. 
• Empowered communities–REPARLE transforms communities from recipients of aid to economically-empowered communities active in sustainable, income-generating activities.

In Africa, the number of farmers subscribed to digital services has grown by between 40-45% per year in the last three years. 33 million farmers registered for digital agricultural services in SSA, and statistics project 200 million will be registered by 2030. REPARLE’s model meets a niche by addressing the entire value chain from cultivation training, through to aggregation, market access and sales, while concurrently being a marketplace to connect farmers to more products and services to improve their productivity. 

We have potential partners who are interested in working with us to replicate REPARLE elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa, such as Solidaridad in South Africa. We would use this prize to scale and replicate our model within Uganda and in countries across SSA, in order to widen our impact.