Saben Foods

Saben foods is a social enterprise providing small holder farmers with reliable route to markets and fair prices for their produce.Our mission is to create transparent, efficient and commercially viable village agent sourcing networks to supply local, regional and international buyers with high quality and traceable saben foods trade transparency services formalizes value chain transactions and improves efficiency, so that rural agricultural markets work better.The challenge: Small holder farmers in Uganda work in unorganized food markets with limited transport, lack of finance for aggregation and no connection between producers and final buyers.Farmers are often forced to sell to middlemen for low prices, off-takers struggle to sell to middlemen for low prices, off-takers struggle to get reliable supply of quality produce and rural employment opportunities are limited.Saben foods brings visibility to supply chain transactions to address these challenges and integrate small holder farmers into sustainable supply chains.Saben foods provides an alternative to the buy low sell high trading practice common in agricultural value chains in Africa.Our model links commission earned by our network to the price farmers are paid for produce, providing an incentive to maximize farmer.Our solution establishes networks of village agents who provide trade transparency services to rural communities.Our mobile enabled trading and payment platform enables collaborative supply chain management, allowing price setting, tracking of produce from collection to delivery and of payments from buyers to farmers.Saben foods provides trade finance so that farmers can be paid cash on the bag on delivery of produce and to cover transaction costs to get produce to buyers.We carry out market analysis, identify buyers and manage supplier relationships.Process: Saben foods negotiates supply contracts with buyers and registers deals that make business sense on platform.Farmers bring produce to collection point,a village agent checks quality, weighs and then triggers a payment directly from saben foods to the farmer’s mobile.Saben foods manages the aggregation from different agents, transaction logistics and delivery to the final buyer.We have a commission based service charge linked to what farmers get paid and any profit is shared equally between farmers and saben foods