UGANDA, Buganda | Real Muloodi News | Most Ugandans describe land as the key to wealth, however leaving it idle or unattended to for years is not making the most of your investment. Even though land appreciates in value over time, the returns are not comparable to land that has been developed.
The main reason many Ugandans leave their land lying idle for years is because they lack funds to develop them. That is where Buladde Financial Services comes in.
Buladde Financial Services, a Cooperative Society, was formed to help Ugandans harness the potential of their land assets, especially in the Buganda region.
The Buganda Land Board started Buladde SACCO to help people improve their land tenure security, develop their land, and improve their way of living through savings and borrowing.
According to John Mark Ernest Golooba, the Buladde Financial Services Manager, they help people through voluntary savings and access to affordable credit facilities to enable people to secure the land and use it to develop themselves.
“We discovered that most people did not have money to secure their land, they cannot get money to survey their land or even finish their houses. So we started a Sacco where people could save and take credit to develop their land,” Golooba said.
“If you have land with the right documentation, you can access money from financial institutions. You can also get partners to develop the land,” Golooba says.
Buladde Cooperative is currently serving around 3,650 customers both in Kampala and Wakiso, with 58% of them being women.
Golooba notes women are more interested in savings and accessing soft loans, since they are involved in more business ventures. Some women have even expanded their businesses using savings and soft loans from Buladde.
Technology
Last year, Buladde Financial Services set out to streamline its service provision by embarking on a digitisation journey. It started with on-boarding its members onto a digital system. Digitisation will enable Buladde to serve its clients more conveniently and efficiently.
“All client information is in the [digital] system, but we are now working on having them transact digitally so that they don’t have to come to the office to transact,” Golooba notes.
Buladde is among the participants in the 40-days-40-FinTechs project, an initiative of HiPipo, in partnership with Crosslake Tech, ModusBox and Mojaloop Foundation.
Golooba commended the organisers for the initiative, saying it has widened their understanding of the use of technology within the financial services sector.
He adds: “You find that we also have a challenge of people who come to borrow from us, yet they have multiple loans from other institutions, while others present forged documents for security. But I believe when we digitise, and solutions like Mojaloop [open source software] are adopted to enable us to access information in a pool, doing background search will make it easier to curb such issues.”
Innocent Kawooya, the HiPipo Chief Executive Officer, commended Buladde Cooperative for the initiative to promote savings and credit through a niche product – land. He added: “The main role of financial technology is to improve financial inclusion and you are already doing that; you are already encouraging very many people to save money and also extending out credit to help people improve their businesses.”
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