Young Women Involved in Groundnuts Production Project

This project, Young women involved in Groundnuts production was intended to address the issues faced by single and young mothers who were already engaged in small scale groundnuts production as a business but lacked the necessary skills, information and knowledge to scale up and add value to Groundnuts for production, packaging, marketing and profitability for better income generation and increased employment opportunities.

This intervention was executed through training of the single young mothers on group dynamics, Groundnut production in form of processing, packaging and marketing, and oil extraction as value addition, Start and Improve Your Business Training, Market Linkage to financial institutions and markets, including formation of Village savings and loans associations as well as sales marketing and customer care.

4 groups of Atleast 20 single young mothers already involved in groundnuts production and packaging were identified and trained on value addition which involved Branding, Processing and Packaging with specific focus on Red beauty variety. Groundnuts Grinding Machine and Oil extraction machine was procured for the Single young mothers for scaling up their production.

From the knowledge and skills acquired, the young women have expanded the existing small scale groundnut processing and packaging ventures and oil extraction as value addition in their own homes, through market linkage the beneficiaries have increased their production and market base thus realizing profits, the beneficiaries have also diversified their profits to start other businesses like vegetables marketing, fish marketing, produce marketing, poultry keeping, piggery among others, single young mothers have also started their own saving and credit association where they can now borrow money at low interest rate in order to scale up their production, 200 jobs were created as a result of the project thus creating jobs for themselves and other hence creating self-employment and gaining the much needed incomes for improving their household income hence self-reliance and improved standard of life as well as job creation.

The project was implemented in Soroti Municipality, Soroti District from January 2016 to October 2016 and this was made possible with the support of the Youth-to-Youth Fund of the Youth Entrepreneurship Facility of the International Labour Organisation funded by European Union.