Ubuntu Co. Ltd: Magwi Maize Production Capacity Building Project

The grant will be used to construct a maize milling factory to process maize bought from smallholder farmers. The plant is estimated to process 14000 tons of maize annually to produce 70,000 bags of twenty (20 kg) maize meal and 20,000 bags of maize bran. The factory will ensure a ready market for smallholder farmers as Ubuntu will be buying directly from them. This will encourage local production as more landowners will be incentivized to engage in farming. The farmers will receive favorable prices for their crops and save costs by delivering their crops to the factory that will be located within the community. The local community will be guaranteed a consistent supply of affordable, quality and locally produced maize flour...The grant will also support the construction of an aflatoxin testing lab. The presence of aflatoxins in grains leads to health problems such as thyroid cancer as well as the financial loss for smallholder farmers who can't sell their products to the premium markets. South Sudan currently does not have an aflatoxin testing facility meaning that we cant tell whether the grains we are consuming are safe or not. additionally, Agro-processors struggle to source locally grown maize because of the uncertainty and rely mainly on imported maize. The testing lab will provide services to farmers, traders and millers to determine the quality of their grain. Therefore providing farmers with access to more markets and better prices for their uncontaminated maize. For Ubuntu, the lab will ensure that the company is compliant with quality assurance and food safety. The lab will enhance our revenue as well as income for the farmers.

Source: United States African Development Foundation, IATI activity data via the IATI Bulk Data Service, published under Creative Commons CCZero (cc-zero, as registered on the IATI Registry) (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/). Read from https://bulk-data.iatistandard.org/usadf/usadf-southsudan.xml. Reshaped by All Business Africa into this record; amounts and currency are as the funder states them.