In Mbale Market, on a Tuesday morning in July, Benjamin Wamono watches a crate of tomatoes go soft. He brought them from his farm in Sironko District the previous day — a four-hour journey by matatu, much of it on unpaved roads. The tomatoes were bruised before they reached the market. By Wednesday, two-thirds will be unsellable.
This is post-harvest loss: the quiet, daily attrition of food between farm and fork that costs Uganda an estimated 1.5 trillion Ugandan shillings annually — roughly $400 million. It affects maize (15–25% losses), tomatoes (up to 50%), and root crops including cassava and sweet potato (20–40%).
The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), based in Kampala, has documented that Uganda's post-harvest losses are among the highest in sub-Saharan Africa — not because farmers lack knowledge, but because the infrastructure between farm and market does not exist: refrigerated transport, village-level cold stores, hermetic storage bags, rural electricity for processing.
Solutions exist. Evaporative clay coolers, developed and tested by CGIAR affiliates, can extend the shelf life of tomatoes from three days to three weeks at a cost of $30. Solar-powered cold storage units are now commercially available at prices that cooperatives can afford with group loans.
The gap is not technology. The gap is the last kilometre — the policy, financing, and distribution infrastructure to get these solutions to the 3.5 million smallholder farming households that need them most.