The Rootical Times #2
The Rootical Times covers regular updates about the progress made with piloting Rootical in Uganda. In the spirit of full transparency, these updates for (potential) financial partners and anyone interested to follow our journey are shared here, publicly, on our website. Enjoy reading and learning along with us!
The #Rootical2023 Bootcamp is a wrap
We got to know our 2023 Cohort of high potential Founders in person, took a food systems mapping deep dive, interacted a lot and had great fun. We identified crucial dynamics and promising design challenges in the Ugandan Food System. We’re now ready to switch from 10 days of problem loving to 3 months of systemic venture building.
TLDR: Bootcamp Newsflash
From August 1 to 11, 2023, in Entebbe, the Rootical Food System Leadership Bootcamp has been organised with 3 parallel tracks:
Agroecology and Regen Ag
A worldcafé to explore regenerative, organic and Agroecology in the context of Uganda
Keynotes by the Directors of NOGAMU and PELUM Uganda.
A role play and heated debate of the Prophets vs. the Wizards.
We mapped 178 Agroecology and Food System actors, of which 90% is within our direct network.
Exploring the Business Agroecology Criteria Tool with Vermipro.
Screening Kiss The Ground, The Soil Carbon Sponge and the Soil Food Web School.
An exciting visit to the peri-urban farm and family team of Jero Farm! (see pictures)
Purpose-driven Business
Zoomed in on the opportunities of #Stewardownership in Uganda 🇺🇬 A conversation based on Purpose that sparked a lot of interest!
A keynote by the Jakana Foods CEO about #inclusive business models.
Cohort led sessions about anything from regenerative marriage or data driven decision making to women's role as climate leaders
A spectacular egg drop (team) challenge, an energetic (individual) Opportunity Walk, and a vibrant Team Entrepreneurship challenge with 8 teams making as much money (and fun) as possible
Food Systems Practice
The Cats of Borneo (and Rob Lubberink) convinced us of the importance of systems thinking.
The Iceberg Model and a kind of SWOT analysis of Uganda’s food system got us all warmed up.
Defining our North Stars, Near Stars and Framing Questions to guide our Food Systems mapping.
Exploring and clustering Forces, Enablers and Inhibitors, upstream causes and downstream effects.
The crux was building loops, and narrating the central stories that have to be told for each (sub)system.
We zoomed in on the problem, our target persona, key entry points, potential pain relievers and gain creators, our knowns and unknowns, and crucial assumptions to test.
Problem validation: developing an interview guide, testing it, processing key insight statements, finding gems, and formulating the most exciting design challenges as How-Might-We questions.
Participants dug deep with introspection and soul searching to find their edge in the food system.
8 Systems level Theories of Change were developed, based on the Metabolic way.
An exciting Food System Maps Fair for all groups to share their subsystem maps with each other.
Finished with a bang: 40 High Potential Founders sharing their 4-minutes problem-founder fit pitches 💥
How Might We Regenerate Uganda’s Food System?
How-might-we questions are often used in human-centred design to frame a challenge that is begging for a (business) solution. The bootcamp work and our joint research effort will result in a Blueprint to answer the above question. Stay tuned for this Rootical publication in the coming months!
These are the 7 topics we prioritised together:
1️⃣ Soil degradation
2️⃣ Indigenous seeds & other agro inputs
3️⃣ Nutritious, safe, and affordable food
4️⃣ Market access, sales and distribution
5️⃣ Food loss during transport and storage
6️⃣ Post harvest losses and value addition
7️⃣ Revaluing organic waste streams
For all these priority areas, we identified leverage points: nodes in the food system where if we make a small change, all surrounding parts in the system also start moving & improving.
What did we learn?
3 Key insights that somewhat surprised us during the #Food System Leadership Bootcamp.
1️⃣ Diversity Is Power 💪🏾
Our diverse cohort of food system practitioners brought a wealth of different perspectives, experiences, backgrounds, and motivations to the table. We had lawyers and Ph. D's, farmers and tech founders, food scientists and finance experts, a former smuggler, field technicians and business leaders.
Collaborating with respect, valuing diversity as our key asset, allowed us to create a deep and shared understanding of the Ugandan food system dynamics. And have a lot of fun while at it 😁
2️⃣ Methodology Is King 👑
At Rootical we say NO to theoretical lectures, audience-dozing conferences, lengthy debates that go nowhere, and other top-down formats. We went all-in on action-oriented methodology with participation at its heart, to learn from doing and to learn from each other. With dynamic red hat/green hat debates, mapping exercises, soul-searching questions, fun challenges, world cafés, cohort-led sessions and an estimated number of 3452 post-its to dig deep.
10 Days, 40 Food System Leaders Trained. We exceeded our expectations of (and celebrate) how far and deep we could go by using this mix of approaches. Our participatory approach was highly appreciated by our 2023 Cohort of Future Founders with an amazing net promoter score of 4.92 on a scale from 0 to 5.
3️⃣ The Change Is Within Us 🔮
Rootical believes we can boost the momentum for #Agroecology through #Purpose-driven #Entrepreneurship .
Powering Ugandan entrepreneurs to build and own regenerative agri-food businesses that are designed to shake up the food system, they become part of and strengthen the movement for regenerative agriculture in the country. We build, test, and improve this startup studio model, and then scale out to other countries to transform food systems in East Africa and beyond.
As one of our participants, nicknamed the Earthworm Guy, suggested: “I see many of us are avoiding the salads at lunch, because they don’t think they are safe. As the presenter told us food systems are dynamic, the way we understand it is part of our background, our culture, who we are. So, we are going to change the food system because the change is already within us.”
Inspection and fun during the dynamic team egg drop challenge
Follow our regular updates via LinkedIn and Twitter and do contact us if our journey and impact is aligned with your vision and/or the vision of your organisation: all hands on deck are needed to build a future-proof food system, in Uganda and beyond.
