ABOUT UJAMMA YOUTH FARMING PROJECT

Established in June 2005, UYFP is an African youth-led farming cooperative that has secured a 100-acre plot in the city of Gweru under the Zimbabwe government's A1 resettlement program and is registered under the Ministry of Youth, Gender and Employment Creation. The leadership core of UYFP is a very socially conscious unit that despises poverty and desires greatness at family, national and continental levels. Our mission is to empower African youth through gainful farming initiatives so that they are able to demonstrate the essential skills necessary to function as lifelong productive citizens in Africa's development. While one of our immediate goals is to offer produce to wholesalers and retail outlets in and around midland provinces in Zimbabwe, a longer term goal is to establish a training program such that youth of African descent from outside of Zimbabwe and even outside Africa will also visit, meet, train/work, and bond with their youth counterparts on the farm.

Ujamma Youth Farming Project (UYFP) will offer farm produce to wholesalers, retail supermarkets, restaurants, motels and hotels in and around Midlands province, Zimbabwe.The cooperatives business purpose and cooperatives advantage is summed up in the mission statements which reads:

Empowering the youth through gainful farming initiatives so that they are able to demonstrate the essential skills necessary to function as life long productive citizens of Zimbabwe’s agrarian reforms.

The main lines of business are Market gardening and Poultry production.

Driving the rationale for the need to invest in farming in Zimbabwe is an ever increasing, and currently unsatisfied demand for agricultural production by local farmers. Due to high employment levels among the youth, the threat of HIV/AIDS pandemic, and low agricultural productivity due to continues drought spells, there is an increasing trend in national demand for productive farming, not only within established farming cooperatives but upcoming farming cooperatives.

It is management’s belief and best estimation that the total market for local farm produce is expected to grow by 15 – 30% in the next few years.

UYFP is assured of success. It will be a well managed and organized farming venture,implementing the latest farming techniques, produce, marketing, sales and produce delivery. The farming cooperative will be exceptionally located in the Midlands Provincial capital, Gweru, and will use a competitive pricing policy paying particular attention to customer needs and care.

The project will empower the youths by financially rewarding them as evidenced by the financial analyses. The project requires start up capital in order to defray start up costs, and finance capital equipment such as tractors, planters, harrow and trailer for market gardening and feeding fowl runs for poultry production.

UYFP is wholly Zimbabwean and a start up project resulting from Zimbabwe’s agrarian reform which came into being to empower the black majority through land ownership and productive farming. The cooperative’s management brings into the project, more than ten years of management skills.

The many risks associated with this project, as we have shown in this document, are well under the management grasp, and their adverse impact on the project will be minimal. The agrarian reforms are one of the fastest growing initiatives by the government of Zimbabwe.UYFP is set to grow with it. The financial rewards to be derived from the in this project cannot be ignored by any discerning investor.