A woman farmer proudly displaying her official farmer ID, linking her directly to SMART Foods Uganda’s cluster farm system, training, and guaranteed market.

In 2022, SMART Foods Uganda founder, Martin Ssali, was part of the Acumen Fellowship. He vividly remembers the training and mentorship their cohort had, including studying models like IKEA. This is a leading retail store in the US and world over, and yet in spite of this, they have an impactful social entrepreneurship component that creates long-term jobs and income for marginalized communities like women and refugees.

Worthy to mention is that all Acumen Fellowships emphasize this one thing: business should be more than just profit. To draw directly from Acumen’s website:

When entrepreneurs combine the hard skills of building with the harder skills of moral leadership, they transform livelihoods, industries, and markets. It’s why we ground our theory of change in people and partner with them to scale impact.

From this Fellowship in 2022, Martin and the team at SMART went through a deep retrospection. They needed a new business model that could answer the following questions: What problem are we truly solving beyond product sales? And are we transforming the lives of the people who feed our supply chain?

From this moment, the mission became clear. On the product side, they knew their soy-based products were a powerful, affordable weapon against undernutrition which is a major challenge in Uganda. And looking back at the supply chain, they realized that the farmers sourcing their soybeans were the true backbone of their entire production process.

On closer study, they discovered that the majority of the over 300 farmers they work with were women living in difficult social and financial conditions. Most of them had no land of their own, lacked proper agricultural skills, and suffered heavy, devastating losses whenever the weather shifted.

Crucially, a major operational challenge also emerged around quality. High-grade soy processing demands exceptionally clean, well-sorted beans—a level of quality that depended almost entirely on women devoting hours of painstaking labor to post-harvest sorting. Yet despite being the very cornerstone of crop quality, these women earned virtually nothing from the soy trade due to deep structural barriers: no land of their own, no financial capital, and no direct market access.

This was where the new business model forced them to become far more intentional toward these highly dedicated women farmers. Rather than treating them as mere suppliers, SMART Foods Uganda restructured its entire operational model to directly solve the challenges they faced in the following ways:

• Land Access: Leasing land for one or two seasons, which is then managed alongside the woman farmer. This directly addresses the hurdle of these farmers having no land of their own.

• Climate-Smart Seed & Fertilizer: Supplying high-yielding, drought-resistant soybean seed and quality fertilizer. This mitigates crop losses caused by unpredictable weather patterns.

• Training: Educating the women farmers on Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) to ensure they achieve maximum yield and efficiency.

• Capital Injection: Providing upfront capital to assist the farmer with essential field operations, including land preparation, tilling, weeding, and other logistics.

At the end of a good season, the outcome is a win-win: the farmers are guaranteed a ready market for their harvest, and SMART Foods Uganda secures high-quality soybeans for production. To ensure a dignified income, SMART Foods pays a premium price of 200 to 300 Ugandan Shillings above ongoing market rates for well-cleaned, top-grade beans.

The initial capital injected is simply deducted from the total value of the produce, and the farmer receives the net pay. Even in the event of a bad season, all leased lands are covered under Agricultural Insurance. This ensures that even during harsh climate shifts, the farmer still receives a payout rather than facing an ultimate loss.

The second critical pillar of this model takes place in processing: these high-quality beans feed directly into SMART Foods’ 4 climate-smart, patented food processing technologies. This transforms the raw harvest into high-quality soy-processed products designed to directly combat regional undernutrition.

By bridging farm-level empowerment with processing innovation, this two-pronged business model transformed the reality for vulnerable women farmers in Uganda. More than that, it brought absolute clarity to SMART Foods’ overarching vision:

Nutrition starts in the soil, moves through the farmer to the producer, and ultimately reaches the table.

By structuring their business this way, SMART Foods Uganda became meaningfully involved in every single link of the chain—exactly as a socially conscious enterprise should be.

Social media is one of the most powerful forces of connection in the world today. For all its well-known drawbacks, it also delivers undeniable good. Top among those positives is connecting real impact to global opportunity.

One such opportunity became the point of contact for Martin to the TED stage.

Through their LinkedIn platform, Acumen issued a call to its Fellows to submit proposals showing that their ventures were worth sharing on a global platform. Key to their selection were entrepreneurs putting theory into action in their daily business practices—enterprises that had embraced social entrepreneurship to remain people-focused, not just profit-focused.

It was this two-pronged, woman-centered business model that set SMART Foods Uganda apart, earning Martin a spot among just 15 Acumen Fellows selected globally to take the TED stage in Vancouver, Canada, in April 2026.

Five years down the line this is still a mission SMART Foods Uganda is living out every single day. By choosing SMART Foods products, you are directly supporting the Ugandan woman farmer.

You can pick up Smart Instant Soy Milk, Coconut and Soy Milk Yoghurt, and Soy Mchuzi Mix at leading stores across Uganda, including Mega Standard, Carrefour, Capital Shoppers, Quality, TMT, and Ecomart Supermarkets. To place direct orders, reach out directly at +256702285608.

Let us support a brand that is actively empowering Uganda’s women farmers.

Watch Martin Ssali’s Acumen-TED Pitch: