Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) play a vital role in the development of the Ugandan economy. SMEs collectively constitute about 90% of private sector production and employ over 2.5 million people in

Uganda. NUMA is one of the many SMEs in Uganda involved processing of grains and providing nutritious food within Uganda and beyond.

NUMA is a rural based SME specializing in value addition of grains with 25 years’ experience working with farmers in western Uganda. The company employs 135 staff (both permanent and casual). NUMA produces a range of products which are certified by the Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS), all with a brand name “NUMA”.

According to NUMA’s Director, one of the major challenges the company has to struggle with every day is working capital, daily activities of the company is running sustainably. This is in addition that the company has to expand and keep all its employee motivated. In 2022, Soluti Finance East Africa extended a total of UGX600,000,000 social loan to NUMA Feeds Limited. The loan was utilised as working capital for buying of millet grains and some part as asset capital purchase of machinery (single bin sifter for millet milling).

According to the Director, the loan facility from Soluti has enhanced the activities of the company with immense changes at the factory. “With this loan from Soluti, we are now able to pay all our farmers on time, able to deliver all our products to the clients up country on time, improved the quality of millet as we are able to filter what exactly we want, the quantity being processed has also increased as we are able to buy more from the farmers”, he narrated.

Due to the increased market for millet caused by increase in demand from NUMA, the dormant farmers have been re-activated. Resultantly, the number of farmers registered with NUMA has increased as well as farmer cooperative groups.

Kitaga Mixed Farmers’ Cooperative Society is one of the 800 farmers groups supplying NUMA with raw materials, mainly millet and cassava. Established by NUMA in 2014, the group has grown membership from 450 in 2021 to 600 members in 2022. This was majorly attributed to the increase in number of farmers growing millet due to increased demand from NUMA as result of Soluti social loan. The farmer group intends to construct a standard store and acquire a vehicle so that they can improve on their storage and deliver raw materials to NUMA on time in future. The chairperson of the cooperative is very pleased with their relationship with NUMA as he confirmed that NUMA pays them on time and supports them with trainings to produce quality millet.

The loan facility to NUMA was meant to create market for millet farmers in Western Uganda as NUMA rides on the opportunity for affordable and available raw material. The target was to buy at least 245,202kg of millet from farmers, as of December 2022 NUMA had created market for over 250,300Kg of millet from over 150 farmers in western Uganda. This has created income for the rural small holder farmers and hence improved the standard of living as a result of reduced poverty in the targeted households. Jobs were also created for over 40 non-permanent staff who are employed in millet sorting at the factory as a result of the loan facility.