Built to Connect: The FumbaHub Story

Commissioned by NREP to unify Uganda’s energy knowledge—and speed up the clean‑cooking transition

FumbaHub didn’t start as a startup idea. It started as a national need. As Uganda’s clean‑cooking programme gathered pace, the National Renewable Energy Platform (NREP)—working with government and partners—saw the same barrier everywhere: knowledge was scattered. Policies here, pilots there, data in PDFs, lessons in inboxes, technicians in WhatsApp groups, and communities learning in isolation. Great work—but fragmented. So NREP commissioned a single, living home for the sector’s knowledge—open enough for the whole ecosystem, structured enough to guide decisions. That brief became FumbaHub. We began by listening. Government teams, researchers, innovators, financiers, NGOs, technicians, and users told us what they needed most: clarity on who’s doing what, where to find trustworthy resources, and a simple way to share what works. From that, FumbaHub took shape as three connected pieces: The Ecosystem Atlas to map actors, projects, technologies, standards, financing, and interventions—countrywide. A web‑based knowledge platform hosted under NREP, built as the sector’s one‑stop home for guidance, best practices, datasets, and stories from the field. A mobile app so knowledge travels—into markets, workshops, kitchens, classrooms, and district offices. We launched with training and demos so people could use it from day one—and we kept improving it with their feedback. Because FumbaHub isn’t a portal to visit once; it’s an engine the sector runs together. Today, FumbaHub connects technicians to opportunities, policy makers to evidence, businesses to markets, partners to each other, and communities to practical, safer cooking solutions. It is where Uganda’s clean‑cooking movement meets, learns, and moves faster—on purpose. FumbaHub: built to connect, designed to last, and owned by the ecosystem it serves.