FOUNDER and CEO, RAINTREE FARMS

Lives in: Uganda

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Teddy Ruge, founder and CEO of Raintree Farms, runs a moringa-growing and processing business in Masindi, Uganda. Moringa, a nutrient-rich superfood, has global demand – but Ruge’s journey has been anything but smooth, navigating halted contracts, geopolitical fallout, and other unexpected challenges. How we made it in Africa editor-in-chief spoke to him about the realities of building a successful agribusiness venture in Uganda.

Topics discussed during the interview include:

(only available on howwemadeitinafrica.com)

Interview summary

Teddy Ruge left Uganda at a young age for the US, where he built a career as a photographer. After many years in the US, he had been looking for a way to return to Uganda. In the early 2000s, he started travelling back and forth to his homeland to reconnect with his country.

His first venture in Uganda was Hive Colab, a tech co-working and incubation hub in the capital Kampala. (Read an earlier article where we quoted Ruge in his capacity as Hive Colab co-founder – Kenya’s tech industry: over-hyped or just learning to walk?) However, Ruge was not based in the country full-time, continuing to split his time between Uganda and Texas. In 2011, he moved to Washington, DC, to work as a climate communications consultant for the World Bank. It was through this role that he became interested in agriculture in Africa.

Ruge wanted to start an agribusiness venture in Uganda. He explored various crops before settling on moringa, a nutrient-rich plant classified as a superfood. Nearly every part of the tree – leaves, seeds, bark, and roots – has nutritional and medicinal uses. Rich in antioxidants and all nine essential amino acids, moringa is commonly processed into powder for supplements. It is known to be beneficial for HIV/AIDS patients on antiretroviral therapy, helping to regulate their health. It also aids lactation in nursing mothers and boosts infant nutrition.

Beyond its health benefits, moringa appealed to Ruge because of its ease of cultivation. After about three months, the leaves can be harvested to make moringa powder, while its seeds – used to produce oil – are ready within nine to 12 months. Processing moringa is also relatively simple. At the time, the global moringa market was valued at around $7.6 billion, and Uganda’s climate positioned it well to claim a share of this opportunity.

His plan was to engage smallholder farmers to grow moringa and sell it to his company, Raintree Farms, for processing into powder. Ruge began working on the venture around 2012, and in 2015, he left his World Bank job and officially registered the company.

Convincing small-scale farmers to grow moringa proved challenging. Many had lost faith in new crops after previous government-backed initiatives – such as vanilla and aloe vera – failed due to inadequate infrastructure and market access. Farmers didn’t believe there was a market for moringa.

To gain their trust, Ruge decided to lead by example. Using funds raised from friends and family, he purchased land, planted moringa, and built basic processing facilities. The farm served as a model for other farmers. “Any farmer who wanted to engage with us could come and we teach them how to plant the crop,” he explains.

Cultivating moringa was one challenge; getting it certified for export was another. The organic certification process was rigorous, requiring the company to establish monitoring and record-keeping systems across its farmer network. It took until 2018 for Raintree to secure certification and become eligible to export to Western markets.

While working on certification, Raintree was already generating revenue by selling moringa powder to a local buyer: a Canadian entrepreneur who ran a nutritional company in Uganda. The business focused on products for HIV/AIDS patients and nursing mothers.

Later, Raintree caught the attention of Kuli Kuli Foods, a US-based producer of moringa-based products. Kuli Kuli was expanding rapidly and needed more suppliers. It offered Raintree a $1.2 million contract to provide it with moringa. However, under the contract terms, Raintree had to deliver the order before receiving payment.

While the deal was a game-changer, Raintree lacked the capital to fulfil such a large order. Ruge approached banks in Kampala, but they either offered prohibitively high interest rates or lacked a mandate to fund agricultural projects. His search for financing eventually led him to the Yield Fund, an agriculture-focused investment fund managed by Pearl Capital Partners. Yield Fund agreed to provide an equity loan, and by late 2018, Raintree signed the agreement.

(Read our earlier interview with Dr Edward Isingoma Matsiko, managing partner of Pearl Capital Partners: Lessons learnt from investing in East African agribusiness companies)

In 2019, Raintree began investing in infrastructure and scaling its supply chain. By mid-year, it started production on the Kuli Kuli order.

Just as things were falling into place, trouble struck. Towards the end of 2019, Kuli Kuli informed Raintree that it was halting all supplier deliveries. The company had overestimated demand and needed to clear its stockpile before accepting more shipments. By then, Raintree had already shipped a container to California. Kuli Kuli accepted the shipment but instructed Raintree to pause further exports.

“That was the first major hit to us,” Ruge says, adding that the company had focused all its operations on delivering this one order.

Then came Covid-19. Uganda went into lockdown, halting production and exports. “We didn’t have a customer. We couldn’t produce. The local economy was on lockdown. We had inventory in the warehouse [that] we couldn’t move, we couldn’t export for most of the year,” Ruge explains the dire position the company found itself in.

Despite the pause in operations, farmers in Raintree’s network still expected payment. “We had to send out a letter of suspension to them, tell them, ‘Due to the ongoing uncertainty, we can’t really engage with you at this point until we know from the authorities if we can resume production’.”

In 2021, as restrictions eased, Raintree faced another hurdle: renewing its organic certification, an annual requirement. But pandemic-related disruptions delayed the certification body’s visit, preventing exports. “We had inventory but we couldn’t export it because we couldn’t get it certified. It was a major, major challenge,” Runge notes.

Amid these struggles, Ruge sought ways to diversify. Around 2020, he began developing Qwezi Beauty, a range of moringa-based consumer products. His goal was to move beyond exporting raw moringa and capture more value by producing finished goods.

“There’s a huge transition globally towards healthier products,” Ruge says. He notes that moringa’s versatility allows for a wide range of uses, including animal feed, fertiliser, beauty products, and health supplements. “So why give the value to external parties when we can actually be the ones creating that value domestically.”

Raintree used moringa oil to develop a beauty product line and introduced packaged moringa powder for direct consumer sales. The products performed well locally, and the brand has since expanded into North America, where it has a warehouse to distribute Qwezi Beauty products sold through its website.

Having its own consumer products kept some money flowing into the company while it waited for Covid restrictions to ease.

Ruge also sees opportunities for Qwezi Beauty within Africa itself, especially with the African Continental Free Trade Area opening up new markets. He says the long-term goal is to manufacture high-quality consumer products for African markets. “The CPG (consumer packaged goods) market is a multi-billion-dollar opportunity, and we are looking to be a major player on the continent.”

Qwezi Beauty is now expanding its product range to include moringa-based soaps, shampoos, conditioners, and face masks. It is also planning to roll out fortified flour.

In 2022, Raintree Farms engaged with USAID to rebuild its supply chain and resume large-scale exports. The application process took time and was finalised in April 2023. USAID approved a grant to finance Raintree’s Secure Income Protection (SIP) programme, providing 250 smallholder farmers with a stable monthly income to cover their operational costs.

“We were excited,” Ruge says. “We’ve got customers again. We’ve got the supply chain built up again. Things are going good. We’re ready to get going.” Kuli Kuli resumed orders, and Raintree also secured new buyers in Germany.

But in late 2023, Raintree faced a new crisis when its organic certification body detected herbicide contamination in the supply chain. Since organic certification requires crops to be free of herbicides, the company had to stop exports. After several months of investigation, it traced the contamination to nearby commercial sugarcane plantations that used large amounts of herbicides. However, preventing exposure from adjacent fields proved nearly impossible.

To navigate this, Raintree decided to separate the farmers supplying it with moringa. Produce from farmers near the sugarcane plantations would be designated for the local market, where organic certification isn’t required. Meanwhile, uncontaminated farms would be recertified for export.

(Read an earlier article that touches on the challenges of organic production in Uganda: How this Dutch entrepreneur built an organic agribusiness company in East Africa)

Then came another major blow. In January this year, the recently inaugurated Trump administration announced a winding down of USAID, cutting off funding for Raintree’s SIP programme. Under the funding model, USAID covered the monthly direct payments to farmers. The plan was that once Raintree began selling the moringa produced by these farmers, it would take over the payments using revenue from exports. But with USAID’s abrupt cancellation of funding, Raintree was unable to cover those payments, as it had not yet resumed shipments.

With no immediate solution, Ruge says the company has little choice but to start over, relying solely on production from its own farm, which means it will have much less product to sell.

“We will return to working with farmers once we’re fully back on our feet – a process that could take us about two years, if all goes well,” Ruge notes.

Reflecting on the USAID partnership, he adds: “USAID was bold to fund a new innovative approach to working with vulnerable farmers and I commend them for the effort. SIP needed that kind of support to get off the ground.”

Ruge says that through all this turbulence, he has learned what it takes to build a stable agribusiness in Africa. The most important requirement, he notes, is time to overcome the various challenges. “Yes, money makes it easier but I think patience is really the key to succeeding.”

“You’re building an agriculture entity in Africa. It’s not somewhere like the United States where you have billions and billions of subsidies going out into the agriculture sector. You’re on your own in agriculture in Africa,” Ruge explains. “So all of the problems you think should be solved by government or government bodies, it’s you to solve them.