Khamutima is the founder and Executive Director of the Young Farmers Champions Network (YOFCHAN). The organisation was established in 2016 as a member-based non-profit organisation focused on representing the voices of mostly marginalised young people to engage in the agricultural sector profitably and sustainably. The mission of YOFCHAN is to equip young farmers with the knowledge, tools, and resources they need to start, grow, and scale their agribusinesses. This is achieved through advocating for an enabling environment for the engagement of young people in agriculture, capacity building in agronomy and agribusiness skills, creating linkages to financial support, and markets for the young farmers.
Khamutima attended the One Young World Summit in The Hague, 2018. He subsequently built a strong network in Uganda and in the East Africa region with fellow Ambassadors. Khamutima believes that such networks are instrumental for young entrepreneurs looking to make social impact. The One Young World Community in Uganda holds regular meetings where Ambassadors support each other with ideas on how to improve their work and discuss their experiences. After the Summit, Khamutima was shortlisted for opportunities through One Young World to support YOFCHAN’s development.
Through their Youth Champion Model, which inspires and encourages young people in Uganda to join agriculture as an attractive and profitable business, YOFCHAN have developed a network of 1,500 young farmers. These champions act as leaders of young farmers groups in their communities, receive financial advice, leadership, business management and agronomic training, and access to markets and common-user value addition facilities through YOFCHAN. These champions then take their knowledge and skills back to their communities and replicate YOFCHAN’s model locally. Through this method, YOFCHAN has indirectly impacted over 45,000 young farmers throughout Uganda.
“The contacts I made during the Summit, both from Uganda, East Africa and internationally, have been very helpful in terms of sharing ideas and being able to put those ideas into action to improve my work. In Uganda we have meetings often between the Ugandan One Young World Ambassadors to share our experiences, and these types of networks as an entrepreneur are very important.”
