How David rebuilt his family's farm — one season at a time
When David's father died in the long rains of 2021, the family's two-acre maize plot in Mukono District was all that stood between his mother, his three sisters and destitution. Two years later, that same plot now feeds the family, supplies the local school kitchen, and employs his cousin.
David was twelve years old when he came to the Mukono hub for the first time. His mother had been told by a neighbour that Agano could help with school fees. She brought him on the back of a borrowed motorbike, in his only pair of school shoes.
From sponsorship to soil
The sponsorship match — with a family in Sweden who had been giving for nine years — covered fees, books and a uniform. But our field officer, Sarah Nakato, noticed something during the home visit: the maize crop was wilting. The family had been planting the same hybrid seed for four seasons, on increasingly depleted soil.
Sarah connected the family to the District Agricultural Office and to a smallholder cooperative we'd helped seed two years earlier. The cooperative covered the cost of soil testing and a transition to drought-tolerant sorghum on half the plot.
"The first harvest after the soil rest was the biggest we'd ever had. We sold the surplus to the school feeding programme. That money paid for my sister's secondary school admission."
— David, age 14
What the data showed
Across the 184 farms enrolled in the Mukono cooperative in 2023, average yield rose 41% in the first season and 67% by season three. Eighty-eight percent of participating households moved out of acute food insecurity within 18 months.
David is now in S2. He plans to study agronomy at Makerere University. His teacher Mrs. Namuli has put a note in his file: this one's worth watching.
Sarah Nakato
Field officer, Mukono hub
