From Root to Remedy: Dei BioPharma’s Plant Powers Busoga’s Cassava Farmers 

NAMASAGALI, KAMULI DISTRICT — A quiet agricultural revolution is taking root in the Busoga sub-region as Dei BioPharma scales up operations at its high-tech processing facility in Namasagali. Designed to transform local farming and slash Africa’s heavy reliance on imported medical raw materials, the plant is turning ordinary cassava into pharmaceutical-grade gold.

Turning Root Crops into High-Value Medicine:

Founded by Dr. Matthias Magoola, the multi-million-dollar facility—commissioned by President Yoweri Museveni—is engineered to process hundreds of metric tonnes of cassava daily.

Rather than heading solely to local food markets, the harvested tubers are refined into critical industrial and medical inputs, including:

• Pharmaceutical-grade starch

• Glucose, fructose, and maltose

• Active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and excipients

These outputs feed directly into Dei BioPharma’s main pharmaceutical and vaccine manufacturing plant in Matugga, Wakiso District, reducing the need to import expensive chemical bases from abroad.

A New Economic Lifeline for Busoga Smallholders:

For smallholder farmers across Busoga, Teso, and Lango, the scaling plant offers a major shift away from traditional, lower-return crops like sugarcane.

Local leadership notes that reliable power and steady factory demand are driving up farm-gate prices for raw cassava tubers—moving prices from roughly Shs300 to around Shs700 per kilogramme. Agricultural cooperatives, such as the Kamuli Farmers' Cooperative Society Limited, are actively expanding planting areas to keep up with factory requirements, providing smallholders a direct bridge from subsistence farming into the cash economy.

Cutting Import Costs and Expanding Healthcare:

Beyond agriculture, the Namasagali plant is Phase One of an ambitious biotechnology park. The broader vision includes local production of vaccines, sickle-cell treatments, organic fertilizers, and biofuels. By anchoring medicine production in local soil, Dei BioPharma aims to lower the cost of complex gene therapies and specialty drugs while saving Uganda billions in import expenditures.