Crossgates Connect has announced a significant move aimed at transforming Uganda’s agribusiness sector by helping agricultural SMEs, processors, and farmers transition from simple farm production to modern global trade.
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Led by Doris Beth Atigo, the UK-based company says they are bridging the gap between Ugandan agricultural supply and international buyers.
Speaking to journalists on November 6 2026 at Golf Club in Uganda’s capital Kampala, Atigo noted that while Uganda has abundant high-quality crops (like coffee, tea, chili, vanilla, cocoa, and fresh produce), smallholder farmers and agricultural enterprises frequently face border rejections or miss out on global markets because they lack reliable records, traceability, and certification.
‘’Crossgates Connect is not an exporter, broker, certifier, government agency or ordinary marketplace. It is building a verification and readiness layer that complements public systems, buyer due diligence, SME support programmes and market-access preparation. The company’s message to SMEs is clear: The world may want your product, but the buyer must be able to trust your evidence. STIV AI and the Verified Trade Passport are being built to make that proof visible’’, Atigo told journalists on Friday.
She said Crossgates helps local producers organize their commercial information into a Verified Trade Passport (VTP). This digital passport travels with the business’s trade conversations, giving global buyers immediate confidence regarding product origin, quality standards, production practices, and available volumes.
Crossgates Connect Limited, a UK-registered trade technology company with an operating presence in Uganda, aligned its AI-powered export-readiness infrastructure with Uganda’s national value-addition and economic transformation agenda under the Government’s Tenfold Growth Strategy.
According to officials, the STIV AI + Verified Trade Passport, supports Uganda’s agro-industrialization, SME competitiveness and international market-access objectives.
“Uganda has the products. Uganda has farmers, processors, exporters and entrepreneurs. But modern global trade no longer moves on production alone. Buyers want proof – identity, traceability, compliance records, batch evidence, farm or source location, document validity and audit-ready presentation’’, she added.
Atigo added that the project places strong emphasis on higher household incomes, full monetization of the economy, sustainable industrialization, value addition and competitiveness in regional and global markets.
The product innovation manager at Crossgates Connect, Joshua Kizaalwa explained that STIV AI is Crossgates’ intelligent trade-readiness mentor. It guides sellers through export-readiness steps using voice and language support.
A seller can speak naturally, STIV AI can then help structure that information into practical trade fields: product, product form, origin, likely HScode family, required documents, missing evidence, farm/source GPS, batch record, traceability status, readiness grade and buyer-facing summary.
He noted that Crossgates intends to support a wider value-addition agenda by helping verified SMEs identify needs around packaging, processing, quality improvement, standards, traceability and scale. In the longer term, the company sees an opportunity to connect diaspora capital to verified SME value-addition needs, once readiness and governance structures are strong enough.
The Verified Trade Passport
It is a structured trust profile showing who the seller is, what the seller produces, where the product comes from, what documents exist, which documents are missing or expired, how traceable the product is, what the readiness grade is and what the seller must improve before serious buyer review.
For Uganda’s SMEs, this creates a practical bridge between production and market access. For buyers, it reduces uncertainty. For institutions, it creates clearer visibility of which SMEs are ready, which are promising and which still require support.
Crossgates’ immediate contribution is strongest in the Agro-Industrial Development and Science, Technology, ICT and Innovation pillars. The company is helping SMEs become easier to verify, easier to support, easier to introduce to buyers and easier to prepare for value addition.
The company’s immediate focus begins with agriculture and export-relevant product lanes such as coffee, cocoa, vanilla, horticulture, fish and value-added agro-products. Over time, Crossgates aims to expand the same verification infrastructure into wider SME sectors including manufacturing, packaging, natural products and other value-added industries.
Long-term vision Crossgates’ long-term vision is to build one of Africa’s first AI-powered Verified Trade Passport infrastructures for export readiness, supplier verification and buyer-facing trust.
Uganda’s Tenfold Growth Strategy seeks to move the economy from an approximately USD 50 billion base toward a USD 500 billion economy by 2040, driven by export growth, industrialisation, value addition and technology-enabled productivity.
The Tenfold Growth Strategy is anchored around ATMS: Agro-Industrial Development, Tourism Development, Mineral-based Development including oil and gas, and Science, Technology, ICT and Innovation.
