Cycle Connect
Project Grantee

Cycle connect is a nonprofit organization that supports smallholder farmers in last-mile communities in Northern Uganda, a post-conflict region, offering training and productive assets to help increase their earnings and improve their livelihood.

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​Cycle Connect was established in 2014 with the goal of making the bicycle - a life-changing and sometimes life-saving tool - accessible to impoverished communities in Uganda. In 2018, the organization expanded its product offering to include income increasing productive assets, such as oxen and plow, grinding machines, motorcycles, and maize threshers.​ Cycle connect has created a model for core services for farmers in the last mile:

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1. Productive asset financing – loans with inclusive and affordable terms to enable the farmers to invest in transformational assets, such as equipment which has shown to increase their income by at least 30%.

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2. Last-mile financial and agricultural training – providing farmers with practice and skills that increase their productivity and profit.

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Cycle Connect serves farmers in distant communities where access to traditional financial services is limited. The organization focuses on getting to know the community and understanding its needs, hand delivering the assets, collecting the payments in person, and being present to train and troubleshoot. ​

Cycle Connect aspires to break the cycle of poverty for women farmers, who carry both household and livelihood responsibilities. The organization has set the goal of reaching at least 50% of their clients be women farmers, to help increase their household incomes and enhance their roles as agricultural entrepreneurs in their communities.