Ngora social enterprise unveils satellite-powered farming system for Teso farmers

NGORA, September 14, 2026 — EMESA Smart Agro Initiative Limited has unveiled a satellite-powered farming system aimed at helping smallholder farmers in the Teso Sub-region improve crop monitoring, weather planning and farm management.

The Sat2Farm system uses satellite data and agricultural information to provide farmers with information on crop health, soil and moisture conditions, weather forecasts, irrigation, pests and diseases.

The launch follows EMESA’s transition in 2025 from Farmers Food Basket, a community-based initiative established in 2014, into a social enterprise focused on technology-driven and climate-resilient agriculture.

The Chief Executive Officer Stanley Ochom said the organisation’s shift towards digital agriculture was driven by the challenges farmers face in making production decisions amid unpredictable weather and changing climatic conditions.

“Many farmers were still making critical decisions based on experience, assumptions and unpredictable weather, while technology was already giving us the ability to make farming more precise and informed,” Ochom said.

He said Sat2Farm is intended to reduce farmers’ reliance on guesswork by providing timely information to support decisions on planting, crop management and harvesting.

The system uses the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index [NDVI], a satellite-based measure of vegetation health, to identify possible crop stress. The platform generates colour-coded maps that show the condition of vegetation on individual farms, with updates provided every five days.

According to EMESA, the system also enables farmers to plot farm boundaries, access crop calendars, receive localised weather forecasts and obtain soil-health reports.

The organisation is rolling out the system in the Teso sub-region through partnerships with development and agricultural innovation organisations.

One of the partnerships is with the Ateker Development Foundation [ADEFO] through the Multi-Actor Partnership Phase II [MAP II] project, implemented by Soroti Catholic Diocese Integrated Development Organisation [SOCADIDO].

The MAP II project, funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, runs from November 2025 to October 2029 and is targeting 3,600 smallholder farmers in the Teso sub-region, 60 percent of whom are women.

The project is expected to indirectly benefit about 64,800 people and seeks to promote a shift from rain-fed subsistence farming to market-oriented and climate-resilient agriculture.

Based in Ngora district, EMESA has also partnered with the Makerere Innovation and Incubation Center [MIIC], which provides support to early-stage enterprises working in areas including agricultural technology and climate solutions.

The enterprise is also working with Diba through its Digital, Feasts Mcash and Fromyfarm platforms to improve farmers’ access to markets and financial services.

Ochom said the partnerships were necessary because technology alone would not address all the challenges facing smallholder farmers.

“From my experience, I could not work alone—I had to partner with different people to push agriculture to be ahead of all sectors in Uganda,” he said.

The introduction of Sat2Farm comes as farmers face growing concerns over climate variability and extreme weather events.

The initiative’s developers say access to satellite and weather information could help farmers make decisions on when to plant, irrigate and harvest, while allowing them to identify crop stress before visible damage becomes severe.

However, EMESA said it was still documenting results from the rollout and would publish verified figures on the number of farmers using the system, farms mapped and changes in agricultural productivity.

“We are carefully documenting our farmer-level results rather than exaggerating our impact,” Ochom said.

He said the organisation’s next priority was to establish measurable results from the technology before making broader claims about its impact.

EMESA also said it had obtained certification from Uganda’s Personal Data Protection Office, with the organisation saying farmer information collected through its systems would be handled in accordance with Uganda’s data protection framework.

The organisation said it plans to expand Sat2Farm beyond Teso as it develops partnerships aimed at increasing the use of digital technology in agriculture.

Ochom said the long-term goal was to extend the initiative to farmers in other parts of Uganda.

“I am hoping this will push the work of EMESA Smart Agro Initiative Limited to the entire Uganda,” he said.

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