Josephine Nakakande is the Executive Director of Environmental Conservation and Agricultural Enhancement Uganda (Eco-Agric Uganda). Josephine teaches critically vulnerable and abjectly impoverished Ugandan women how to cultivate oyster mushrooms as a source of abundant and healthy protein, and also provides them with entrepreneurship training so that they can sell their harvests at market.
In her own words, the women that Josephine works with "have absolutely nothing". Many of them live in regions that are historically subject to droughts and corrupt government bureaucracy that leave many residents of the rural villages with a livelihood of less than $1 U.S. per day. After receiving free mushroom cultivation training and entrepreneurship guidance from Josephine and Eco-Agric Uganda, these women are able to earn $4-6 U.S. per day and also achieve food security.
Eco-Agric Uganda has trained over 600 women mycopreneurs to date, and over 400 of these women actively run mushroom cultivation operations.
The trials and tribulations of Josephine and her community are in a historical blind spot to many in the developed world -- generations of Ugandans and Sub-Saharan Africans have been born into an extremely inequitable and challenging world, and the power of mushroom cultivation and education is a truly disruptive technology for thousands of people in the region already -- and hopefully many, many more to come.
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