Bugiri, June 2021
In 2019, Bidhaa Sasa made the leap across the border from Kenya to Uganda, marking our first expansion into a new country. After years of refining our group-based last mile sales and credit model in rural Kenya, we were ready to see whether our approach could work in a new setting.
We didn’t just copy-paste what worked in Kenya. With support from the Global Distributors Collective, we developed and tested a lean scaling approach called the LEAP tool—designed to help last mile companies adapt business models through fast, evidence-based learning. It became the backbone of our expansion playbook.
We landed in Uganda in early 2020. The timing couldn’t have been worse. Within months, Covid-19 struck, and Uganda entered one of the strictest lockdowns in the world. Movement was restricted, in-person sales were halted, and group gatherings—essential for our group credit model—were banned. But the foundation laid by the LEAP approach helped us stay nimble.
Despite the challenges, we managed to run field experiments with Ugandan customers, testing product preferences, group dynamics, pricing, and even mobile money usage (which turned out to be lower than expected). These real-world trials helped us adapt quickly to local realities—confirming, for example, that demand for solar and farming products differed markedly from Kenya, and that gendered product preferences were more pronounced.
By mid-2021, over 250 customers had joined the pilot, and our team had learned invaluable lessons—lessons that no desktop study or consultant’s report could have uncovered.
Uganda taught us that scaling isn’t about size, it’s about adaptation. The pandemic made sure of that. But it also validated that our model—when implemented with flexibility and commitment to learning—can be resilient across borders.