{"id":9310,"date":"2026-04-27T21:10:02","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T21:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.openvaluefoundation.org\/?p=9310"},"modified":"2026-04-27T21:10:03","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T21:10:03","slug":"blog-post-65","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/2026\/04\/27\/blog-post-65\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog post 65"},"content":{"rendered":"

The story of Cycle Connect began when, at university, I met Muyambi, our founder. He is from the southwest region of Uganda and grew up in very humble circumstances. He and his family were what we would now consider our main customers, smallholder farmers living in remote areas of Uganda, far from resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get to the health centre, Muyambi and his family had to borrow a bicycle. In his own words: \u201cThere I was, a seven-year-old Ugandan boy with malaria, on a neighbour's bicycle, on my way to the nearest hospital. The journey, over ten miles in our remote area of Kiyaga, could take hours on foot, but I was lucky that one of our neighbours had a bicycle.\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Muyambi received a scholarship to attend university in the USA. There, he received a donation of $10,000. At the time, 12 years ago, that amounted to 20 million Ugandan shillings, and the way to start making his dream a reality: improving his country. This is how the original idea for Cycle Connect came about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, Muyambi remains on our board of directors as a founder. I am a co-founder, having been part of a group of students who helped develop that idea into a project. For the past five years since then, I have taken an active role in the company's leadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The original idea revolved around the fact that bicycles were very important to those communities. From the outset, Muyambi considered the business element to be key to the project. He had seen many non-profit organisations already providing services in the northern Uganda region and wanted to set up something that would complement those projects. But to function as a business, the community needs to be really interested in the activity being carried out and it needs to be financially sustainable. We didn't know it would lead to a bike financing plan, but that's what that student project became: a bike lease-to-own business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What was clear then, and remains so today, is the fact that rural populations are very far removed from resources, both figuratively and literally. Many communities are over 50 kilometres from major shopping centres or hospitals and are therefore excluded in terms of market opportunities. Our ultimate goal is to lift farmers out of extreme poverty and connect them with opportunities and resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bicycle financing was a first step on the path out of extreme poverty, but we wanted to offer a way for our clients to keep moving forward, and we do that by making higher-value goods accessible to those same clients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being flexible and responsive is a key aspect of who we are as an organisation. We believe in having a strong relationship with our clients, and that means listening to them and responding accordingly. They were asking us to help them access other income-generating assets, they would say to us, \u201cI've paid off the bike and I want something else. You know me, you know where I live, and how I pay. Give me the opportunity to earn money for myself.\u201d And while there were already some financial institutions in the area, at that time, microfinance as a business model was mostly accessible to people in urban areas. It was much harder for rural clients to access these loans, partly because they had to travel into town to repay loans at a branch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So it all started with bicycles, but we've been adding other assets to our portfolio such as ploughs, motorcycles and agricultural machinery. Enabling farmers to increase their income is ultimately what drives us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being a social enterprise is very important to us; it is our main driving force. But we serve Ugandan smallholder farmers, who make up three-quarters of the population and account for a very significant proportion of the country\u2019s GDP. So, whether the aim is to generate financial returns or social impact, there is a market of millions of farmers to serve. This market opportunity is something that most organisations overlook and fail to pay attention to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we manage to lift a segment of the population out of extreme poverty, the consequences will be enormous across the entire country. People are not just living in poverty, but in extreme poverty, and we are committed to taking people to the next level. This is where we are, although the path is not without its challenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are very interested in growing rapidly and are seeking financing for this. Yunus Social Business has become our first investor, which is fundamental for us as it provides credibility when we speak with other investors. As a company looking to raise around $100,000, we are in what's known as the \u201cmissing middle\u201d. This term refers to the stage in a company's life where it's difficult to access financing because it's too large for microfinance and catalytic capital, and too small or risky for banks or private equity. Until now, we have benefited greatly from donations and grants, but as an early-stage social enterprise, we are starting to encounter these kinds of obstacles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From a business perspective, reaching the rural population inevitably presents a number of challenges, as it is far less efficient than serving urban customers. This is why we are developing strategies around crop harvesting costs and trying to scale our model from Northern Uganda to the rest of the country. Trying to reach smallholder farmers, our social mission, poses challenges in terms of costs because in rural areas the population density is lower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A specific issue I struggled with as a co-founder was living in an on-the-ground office in the country. Our focus is \u201cclient-first\u201d, and that means being close to our clients, but it can also be a bit isolating for the company, as there aren't many networks or opportunities to learn from others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are currently focusing on expanding in northern Uganda. In June 2021, we will be expanding into a new region and plan to increase our client base from 4,000 per year to between 10,000 and 15,000, and to double that figure every year. We want to expand across the country and enter a new market in East Africa. Our aim over the next 15 years is to reach one million farmers a year across several countries in the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is very exciting to see the enthusiasm of the Yunus Social Business team in offering support on issues such as customer acquisition strategy, structuring our financing and our agricultural training. We are delighted to be able to learn and grow alongside our investment partners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meet a Cycle Connect Customer:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lamaro Kevin has been a part of Cycle Connect since 2014. When Lamaro first took out a loan for a bicycle, he realised that a single one was not enough to cover the needs of his family and business. So he quickly paid off that bicycle and invested in a second one. After that second bicycle came other productive assets from Cycle Connect, such as a loan for a solar light and another for oxen and ploughs. He says he is looking forward to applying for another loan to get a motorcycle so that he can continue moving forward and achieve the dreams he has for his family.

\"Blog_Cycle_Connect_cliente.jpg\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This article was originally published on the Yunus Social Business blog in January 2020: https:\/\/www.yunussb.com\/blog\/cycle-connect-making-tracks<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

La historia de Cycle Connect comenz\u00f3 cuando, estando en la universidad, conoc\u00ed a Muyambi, nuestro fundador. \u00c9l es de la zona suroeste de Uganda y creci\u00f3 en un entorno muy humilde. \u00c9l y su familia eran entonces lo que ahora considerar\u00edamos nuestros principales clientes, peque\u00f1os agricultores que habitan en zonas remotas de Uganda, alejados de […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-post"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9310"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9312,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9310\/revisions\/9312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}