The Brains behind Uganda’s Goat boom Started in a UCU classroom
By Ms. Grace Bwogi, UCU Alumnus, Class of [2003]
After I graduated from UCU, I received an opportunity I will never take for granted: I was called back as an alumnus to lecture in Social Work. For several years, the classroom was my ministry. I stood before students, shared what I had learned as a Community Development specialist, and watched their faces light up when theory became real. UCU did not just give me an education. It gave me a platform and a calling to serve.
But another calling was waiting for me 200km away in Rakai. My parents’ farm had potential that felt untapped. Every holiday I would return to the same cycle. In 2015, an idea took root: start a commercial goat farm on that family land. Part of the seed capital for that dream came from UCU.
That small start became Bwogi Farms now recognized as one of the brains behind commercial goat farming in Uganda. We did not just raise goats. We proved the model: structured breeding, record keeping, value addition, and training other farmers to turn goats into agri businesses.
One evening, after a long day of lectures, a question stopped me cold: I am teaching students how to reduce poverty and empower communities but what am I building for my own family?
I could not shake it. So I started small. Weekends became farm days. I applied the very principles I taught at UCU — participatory planning, budgeting, risk management, value chain analysis to my own bananas, goats, coffee and sheep. I kept records. I experimented with goat manure instead of costly fertilizer. I bred livestock. And I kept my other calling: training farmers through Bwogi Farms in the same ventures.
The farm became my second classroom, and it taught me something no syllabus could. A resilient livelihood cannot depend on one person or one product. So I stopped seeing single harvests. The banana was no longer just matooke. It became feed for the goats. It became an all-year-round income. The goats were no longer just animals. They became manure for the farm, breeding stock for farms all over Africa, and a steady revenue stream that helped put commercial goat farming on Uganda’s map.
What began as a lecturer’s side project quietly grew into a full agri-enterprise. The irony was beautiful: the skills I used daily at Bwogi Farms were the same ones I taught in Mukono.
UCU gave me the chance to teach. Farming gave me the chance to practice to feed both community and household, just as our motto “Centre of Excellence in the Heart of Africa” challenges us to do.
Today, when I walk Bwogi Farms, I do not just see crops and animals. I see resilience, stewardship, and service. I see A Complete Education for A Complete Person playing out in real time.
I did not leave teaching behind. I took teaching to the soil. At UCU we learn that a classroom is not EntrepreneurEntrepreneuralways four walls. Sometimes it is a banana plantation at Bwogi Farms. Sometimes it is a sheep kraal. And sometimes, it is the very ground where a community’s future is grown
