Borrower Impact Story: Tito Okello

By Kaivan Khalid Sattar

Recently I had the chance to visit Tito Okello’s farm at Abeket, a village near Soroti, Uganda. Tito has taken three loans from Asaak to help finance a contract he has with suppliers of orange seedlings. How exactly does this supply chain work? The Ugandan government wants to develop the agriculture industry, in particular the value chain for oranges.

Government awards a competitive contract for someone
to supply potted orange seedlings to a high-needs rural area

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The winner of this contract (“orange seedling suppliers”)
sub-contracts part of the work to Tito Okello, who has
expertise in growing orange trees from early to mid-stage

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Tito sells potted, mid-stage seedlings to the orange
seedling suppliers

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Suppliers deliver these seedlings to the designated
high-needs rural area, where farmers tend to them
for three years before oranges appear

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Ugandan government buys these oranges at a fair
price and presses them into juice in a Soroti factory

Working with Asaak, Tito was able to finance the upfront costs necessary to complete this project including seeds, fertilizer, irrigation enhancements and employing additional farmhands. Without Asaak, Tito would have had two options: (1) try to secure a loan from a commercial bank or (2) go without the lucrative contract. For our friends in Uganda, financial services have traditionally been a privilege, not a right. Here at Asaak, we want to change that.

Kaivan (left) and Tito (right) stand in a field of young orange seedlings

Orange seedlings require a lot of water to grow. Given the drought that has recently plagued the Eastern region of Uganda, Tito had to build his own irrigation using a nearby pond.

Pictured here are $10,000 worth of orange seedlings, potted and ready for Tito to deliver to the supplier

Later Tito showed us his mango farm — he sells these fruits directly in the market