UGANDA – Fresh produce and fast-moving-consumer-goods aggregator Twiga Foods, has officially commenced business operations in Uganda, officially marking its first pan-African expansion drive into Africa’s online retail market.
The move is great news for Ugandan consumers as they will be able to access high quality fresh produce ranging from onions, tomatoes directly from the Twiga foods farm.
Meanwhile for the Ugandan farmer, the opening of Twiga will provide a platform for them to export high quality fresh produce like Pineapples, Watermelons, among others to Kenya and the rest of the East African markets.
Speaking during the launch, Twiga’s CEO, East Africa Yebeltal Getachew noted that the company was proud to expand its business to Uganda.
He explained that for the start, Twiga will only be able to serve customers that reside in Kampala, but that there are plans to expand the service portfolio to other major towns before adding that an effective framework was already in place to see to it that the Ugandan market is diligently served.
“Twiga is synonymous with innovating for sustainability. We are not just an online platform that connects farmers, suppliers, vendors to customers.
“We are a highly efficient food security engine, built to sufficiently control and manage forces that cause scarcity, while ensuring sustainability of the food security enabling systems.
“We have instilled very stringent quality assurance processes to ensure hygiene and proper produce handling, and have, by the same virtue, been awarded Global food certificates.
“We also put in place mechanisms where one can easily map the journey of their food from the farm to their plate; for purposes of quality control,” he explained.
The latest development comes at a time when major supermarket chains in Uganda are shutting down following a significant resurgence of online retail.
“Since the inception of Twiga, we have built a deep understanding of how to innovate in the African retail market.
“We are embracing independent retailers while giving them greater access to high quality food, produce and consumer goods by leveraging the latest technology and the ubiquity of mobile phones combined with modern distribution and logistics,” said Yebeltal.
Venturing into the new market follows the company’s recent partnership with automobile manufacturer Isuzu EA and commercial bank NCBA Bank to boost affordability and safe delivery of fresh produce to retailers across the region through 3rd party fleet marketplace.
The partnership which seeks to see up to 300 Isuzu trucks being released into the marketplace in phases.
The initiative avails an opportunity for the members of the public to invest as little as 10% of the value of the vehicle, get financing on a brand new 5T Isuzu and have it deployed with Twiga Foods for a regular monthly income for the next 6 years.
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