The duo founded Drought Guard Africa in 2023, which designs and installs climate-smart irrigation, clean water, and solar energy systems for rural farmers, refugee settlements, and underserved communities.

But building the technology turned out to be easier than persuading farmers to trust it. Many had farmed the same way for generations. A new irrigation system, however clever, meant little until they could see it working on someone else’s farm.

“People believe successful stories from the people they know,” Mwijukye says.

It is a lesson that captures much of their journey.  Africa may have the technology, but the harder problem is getting it onto farms where it can actually change how food is grown.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

If the two of you had never met, where do you think your lives would have ended up?

Mwijukye: I think I would probably be in public service or have continued with education. I did a bachelor’s degree in water and irrigation engineering, and I always felt I could go for a master’s, then a PhD, and perhaps join academia. Or I could have ended up working in public service in the water and irrigation space.

Asiimwe: I don’t know why he’s saying this because the truth is, he founded this before I joined him. He didn’t get into it because we were together.

We’ve been together for more than 10 years. We met in high school in 2015 and went up to Senior Six together. We later took different paths but ended up at the same university. I was doing computer science, but I would always go to his room.

If we had never met, I think I would still have ended up in agriculture. Most of the projects I worked on at university were agriculture-related. Before this, we also co-founded a youth NGO. I’m still part of it, although I don’t put much time into it anymore because most of my focus is here.

When did you first realise your co-founder wasn’t just a good colleague, but someone you’d trust with your career—and perhaps your reputation?

Mwijukye: For me, it goes back to when we met in high school in 2015. We literally shared almost everything. From 2015 until around 2021, it was simply a friendship. We were always together, so we knew each other very well and trusted each other with almost everything.

That made it easier for me to share the vision with him. It didn’t take him long to say, “Yeah, we can do this.”

Asiimwe: After 11 years, he’s like a brother to me. Even without the business, we would still be close. I can stay in his room, and we can share almost everything. Business isn’t what brought us together in the first place. It’s almost a complement to the friendship.

What’s something about your co-founder that frustrated you in the beginning but has since become one of the company’s biggest strengths?

Mwijukye: When it comes to finding potential investors, grants, or other opportunities, that is not his thing. I would tell him, “Look, you can use LinkedIn for most of these things. People are always sharing opportunities. You just have to make yourself available and keep looking.”

Even when I found an opportunity, following up and doing the application wasn’t his game. He’s into tech. He loves being on his computer coding.

Eventually, I realised that it was actually useful because our roles became clear. I knew he could do that, so I had to do this. If I spend a day without scrolling through LinkedIn and different groups looking for opportunities, I feel like I’ve lost a million. I find the opportunities that fit us and do the applications.

Asiimwe: For me, it’s his decision-making. Sometimes he comes across as a dictator. I tend to look at things objectively and ask, “How do you feel about this?” On his side, sometimes it’s just, “Let’s do this.”

But I’ve realised that when he strongly believes in something, he puts all his energy behind it. What he speaks about, he enforces and supports. That has become a strength for the business.

You’ve spent years trying to solve other people’s problems. Who helped you solve yours when you were close to giving up?

Asiimwe: We’re solving farmers’ problems, although we also benefit because that’s how the business makes revenue.

Along my journey, I’ve had many people helping me. Growing up, my family wasn’t really middle-class. Getting into a good school and university was difficult. But I grew up with scholarships. I got through high school on a scholarship and university through a government scholarship.

So I feel like other people were solving my problems. That’s partly where I get the heart to help solve other people’s problems. Now I can combine that passion with business.

Mwijukye: My elder brother has been very important. He works in cold storage, and he helped give me the belief that there is enough money in the world and investors are willing to fund you if you identify a real problem and organise yourself properly to solve it.

At the beginning, we didn’t have enough money to run the business. That period is difficult because without support, you can easily crash and start thinking, “Maybe this isn’t meant for me.” My brother kept encouraging me. Where financial support was required, he put some money in because he understood the vision and believed in the idea.

Every founder has one decision they’d reverse if they could. What’s yours?

Asiimwe: Hiring friends. We’ve had people on the team who later became problematic. There’s one person, for example, whom I felt wasn’t doing things genuinely and sometimes cheated the company. But he was our friend.

Hiring friends can make running a business harder because it becomes difficult to remove them when things aren’t working. If we could reverse that decision, we probably wouldn’t have hired him in the first place.

Mwijukye: I agree. Friendship really complicates business when somebody isn’t doing what they’re supposed to do. Because you’re close friends, it becomes much harder to deal with the problem purely as a business issue.

If you swapped roles tomorrow, which one of you would struggle more—and why?

Asiimwe: I would struggle more. From this conversation, you can probably already tell that most of those decisions come from him, and he’s really good at them.

Mwijukye: He also hasn’t attended many of these conferences and summits. He loves being on his computer coding.

Asiimwe: But from experience, I think I would cope. Our roles overlap sometimes. When he isn’t around, I play some of his roles, and he does the same with mine.

You’re both in the business of hope. What’s the most hopeless you’ve felt since starting the company?

Mwijukye: For me, it was around the beginning of 2024. We had significant demand from farmers who wanted new systems, but the revenue from our existing farmers wasn’t enough to finance the supply. We tried looking for external funding from banks, but we couldn’t get it because they required documentation and assets that we didn’t have.

It was a really difficult period. You start asking yourself, “Why did I even start this?” We eventually reached out to my brother, who injected a loan into the business. That helped us cover the gap until we received some grant funding.

Asiimwe: For me, it was 2023 when we first started. It didn’t really make sense where we were going because we had almost no capital. What we had couldn’t do the things we were aspiring to do. I kept wondering, “Are we really doing the right thing? Am I just wasting another year?”

Mwijukye: When you’re starting, everything looks good on paper. You think, “Yes, this solution is going to work miracles.” But you haven’t tested whether the communities will actually adopt it.

These are people who have relied on rain-fed agriculture all their lives. You arrive and tell them, “This can transform your farming. You don’t have to rely on rain.” They aren’t immediately going to believe you.

You have to train people. You need demonstration sites. Sometimes you need local government officials or extension officers to come with you. You install an irrigation system and let people see that it works for somebody they know. People believe success stories from people they trust. That was one of the hardest lessons at the beginning.

Outside boardrooms and investor meetings, what do you enjoy talking about that has absolutely nothing to do with startups or climate?

Mwijukye: Football. I’m a Manchester United supporter.

I’m also someone who doesn’t enjoy being in places with lots of people. I enjoy being alone. On a weekend, as long as I have internet, electricity, and my TV, I can spend the entire weekend watching Manchester United—and hate-watching other teams. Before you realise it, the day is gone. That’s basically my life outside work.

Asiimwe: My hobbies are more hands-on. I don’t really like watching; I prefer participating. If it’s football, I play. I also play basketball and indoor games.

When people hear “Africa’s future”, they usually speak about technology. Are we becoming too obsessed with innovation and not obsessed enough with execution?

Asiimwe: That’s very true. Look at Uganda and compare it with countries that developed decades ago. They didn’t have the AI we’re talking about today, yet hunger wasn’t the problem it remains in parts of Africa. It’s 2026. We’re talking about AI and entering a robotic era, yet people in Karamoja are dying of hunger.

So are we really solving the problem? The underlying problem isn’t necessarily that we haven’t adopted enough technology. Maybe we simply aren’t doing the work. We have land that isn’t being used. Or where we are using it, perhaps we aren’t using it properly. Technology isn’t necessarily what has kept us behind.

Mwijukye: I agree. Technology is not Africa’s biggest problem. Execution is. Even without today’s technology, people can solve many of these problems. Our ancestors had problems with food and housing, too, and they had to innovate. Somebody found a way to preserve food. Somebody worked out how to make fire from stones. We need technology, yes, but technology alone cannot solve everything.

Asiimwe: How, in 2026, does Africa still have hunger? How is that possible? We have all this technology and plenty of land, including huge amounts of unused and underutilised land.

What’s one compliment you’ve received that meant far more than any award or funding announcement?

Asiimwe: People say I’m reliable. Once I promise something, I really try to deliver because I like keeping my word. When somebody says I’m reliable, I appreciate that they can see it.

Mwijukye: Trustworthy. I can keep secrets.

Suppose someone gave you $100 million today with one condition: you couldn’t spend it on Drought Guard Africa. What problem would you dedicate your life to instead?

Mwijukye: I would probably solve a similar problem. Take Karamoja in northern Uganda. People are dying because of hunger, yet Karamoja has land that can be farmed. The solution cannot simply be continually taking food there.

If you want to teach your children how to feed themselves, you don’t just keep bringing them food. You show them how food is produced. If I had that money, I would go to Karamoja and establish something that enables people there to farm for themselves. The people themselves would have to be at the centre of it.

Asiimwe: With the experience I have now, I would probably use the same model we already know. It’s incredibly hard to start a completely different business from scratch, even when you have money. I’m a software guy, and I’ve thought about businesses like importing things from China or writing software.

But now I know that the model we have works. I know the pipeline and understand the ecosystem. So if I couldn’t invest in Drought Guard Africa, I would probably start something different that solves a very similar problem.

What’s something you’ve become less certain about as you’ve grown older?

Asiimwe: I’ve learned not to depend on government support. When we started, we thought we might get support from local government officials or government grants. As we operated, we realised that it shouldn’t be our focus.

The Ugandan government does provide money, but accessing it can be difficult. So we’ve grown to understand that we shouldn’t rely on those things. We need to make our own money and use that money to make more money.

Mwijukye: For me, it’s trusting people. People change. When you’re younger, you think, “This is my friend. I can share everything with this person,” or you assume somebody will come and help you. Then you grow up and realise everyone has their own problems. You have to wake up and do the work. You can’t sit there waiting for somebody.

Asiimwe: I’ve also become less certain about employee loyalty. A lot of people care more about the money they are getting than the vision.

There are people on the team who genuinely support the idea and the vision. But you can’t simply assume loyalty. If you give the wrong person too much power, they can cheat the customer or cheat the company.

If I asked your closest friends whether success has changed you, what would they say?

Asiimwe: They would probably say it hasn’t. But success is supposed to change some things. If you get money, maybe you won’t wear the same clothes or go to the same places anymore.

Mwijukye: I don’t completely agree. There’s a saying that when a blind man regains his sight, the first thing he throws away is the walking stick that helped him. Sometimes you don’t notice how you’ve changed. Maybe your friends have certain cars, clothes, or shoes, and when you finally have enough money, you start buying those things too.

But people will always interpret your decisions differently. Someone might want you to go out with them on the weekend, but you have an application due on Monday. You decide to stay home and finish it because that application could bring revenue into your business. That friend may simply say, “Since he got money, he doesn’t visit us anymore.”

Asiimwe: I think what changes is what people see from the outside. Maybe I used to stay in a two-star hotel, and now I stay in a five-star hotel. That’s a lifestyle change. What matters is whether my values—integrity, honesty, and the things I believe in—have changed.

You’re building a company on a continent that often rewards patience less than speed. Have you ever felt pressure to pretend the business was doing better than it actually was?

Asiimwe: It happens. We did some of that at the beginning because the pressure was intense. That was around 2023. But we didn’t continue doing it. We had a friend who was around the team then, and he had mastered the language of exaggeration. He could talk about very big things that we hadn’t actually achieved yet. He would brag about them.

That has never really been my thing. Bragging about things you haven’t achieved doesn’t help because when you lie to other people, you also lie to yourself. Eventually, your brain starts thinking you have already achieved those things, and you stop putting in the work.

Sometimes you meet someone years later and think, “You used to talk about all these big things. What happened?” That’s the danger. Talking big can give you hope, but it can also convince you that you’ve already done the work when you haven’t.

Describe each other using just one word. Then explain why.

Mwijukye: Genius.

Asiimwe: Visionary.

Twenty years from now, when your children or grandchildren ask, “What were you trying to fix?” what answer would make you most proud?

Mwijukye: Maybe 20 years from now, technology will have advanced so much that hunger will no longer be a problem. Our children might struggle to understand what people were going through during our time.

I would tell them about what farmers in northeastern Uganda went through: the droughts, climate change, and the difficulty of producing food. I would tell them about the pain farmers experienced and how we tried to solve some of those problems through irrigation systems and the technologies we implemented. Hopefully, it will sound strange to them, like the stories we hear today about what life was like before phones.

Asiimwe: For me, the story would be about food security. I would tell them how people once died of hunger on one of the most fertile continents in the world, and how little had been done to support the systems that could prevent that. And I would tell them that we tried to change that.

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