The challenge
Coffee is Uganda's most valuable export, and it keeps growing. In the 12 months to August 2025, the country exported 7.93 million bags worth US$2.24 billion, a 58.7% jump in value over the year before. Uganda is Africa's largest Robusta exporter. Most of that coffee is grown by smallholder farmers.
As the sector grows, buyers expect more. They want to know where each lot came from, how it was processed, and whether it can be traced. The EU Deforestation Regulation raises the bar further: coffee sold into the EU must be traceable to the plot where it was grown. Uganda's Ministry of Agriculture is now mapping coffee farms to support compliance.
AgroCoffee works across the whole chain, from farmer training and production through processing to export. Its records, though, still lived where most of the sector's records live: in notebooks, paper forms, phone calls and personal relationships. That works at the farm gate. It breaks down further along the chain, when someone needs to answer a simple question fast. How much came in this week? From which farmers? At what grade? Where is it now?
AgroCoffee needed digital tools that could answer those questions. Those tools also had to fit the people capturing the data, not force them to adopt systems designed for an office with fibre internet.
The approach
Discovery started in the field, not in a meeting room. NASDAN mapped how production and processing data is actually captured today: who records it, at what point, on what devices, and with how much signal. Three constraints shaped the build:
- Connectivity can't be assumed. Field staff work in places where the network drops for hours. The app has to work fully offline and sync on its own once a connection returns, with no lost or duplicated records.
- The phone is the computer. Field teams use mid-range Android phones, so the app has to be light, quick and frugal with battery and data.
- Data entry has to be faster than paper. If digital capture takes longer than a notebook, people go back to the notebook. Every form was designed for speed, with sensible defaults and as little typing as possible.
The solution
NASDAN designed and built a mobile-first system that follows coffee from production through processing to market.
- 01 · Offline-first field app. Field staff record farmer details, deliveries, weights and quality grades on their phones, with or without signal. Records are stored securely on the device and synced to the cloud automatically when connectivity returns.
- 02 · Farmer and supplier registry. Every producer has one digital profile, so deliveries, history and training sit in one place instead of across several notebooks.
- 03 · Production and processing tracking. Each lot is tracked from collection through processing stages, building the chain-of-custody record that traceability depends on.
- 04 · Central data platform. Management sees volumes, sources and processing status across operations in near real time, without waiting for paper reports to travel back from the field.
- 05 · Reliable sync engine. Conflict handling and retry logic keep the data consistent even when several devices go offline and reconnect at different times.
The results & impact
AgroCoffee's team can now see production and processing data that used to be scattered across paper records. Data captured at the farm gate reaches management the same day connectivity allows, instead of weeks later. Each lot has a digital history that can be checked and shared with buyers.
That puts AgroCoffee in a stronger position as traceability shifts from nice-to-have to market requirement. It also helps close a digital-access gap in a sector where that gap is often widest.
"The test was never whether the app worked in Kampala. It was whether it worked at the end of a dirt road with one bar of signal. We built for that."
— Daniel Nasasira, NASDAN
Why it matters
- Built for the field, not the office. Offline-first design means the system works where the coffee actually is.
- Traceability from the start. Lot-level records give AgroCoffee a data foundation for buyer requirements and export regulation.
- Technology that fits the people using it. Simple, fast and familiar on the phones field teams already carry.
