20/11/2025
TheObserverr reports that
Dei Biopharma’s $50m cassava factory that could change medicine
by Our ReporterNovember 19, 2025
On the banks of the Nile in Namasagali, where small-holder cassava farmers have long battled with falling prices and uncertain markets, a new kind of factory is rising, a $50 million bet that Uganda can finally break its dependence on imported pharmaceutical ingredients.
today , President Yoweri Museveni commissions Dei Biopharma’s cassava starch plant, the first phase of an ambitious industrial complex that its founder, Dr. Matthias Magoola, believes could shift the country’s pharmaceutical future.
If it works, Uganda could move from an importer of medicine to a producer of the very ingredients the world uses to make it.
“We are among the first companies in Africa to manufacture our own excipients and APIs,” Dr. Magoola said.
“Almost 99 percent of the starch and other excipients used in tablet and capsule production are imported. That makes local manufacturing expensive and uncompetitive. By producing our own starch, glucose, and malt sugars here, we close a critical cost gap.”
For decades, Uganda, like most of Africa, has been almost entirely dependent on foreign suppliers for the base materials of modern medicine. The continent imports up to 85 per cent of its essential drugs, a vulnerability laid bare during the COVID-19 pandemic when supply chains buckled, and wealthy nations hoarded medical supplies.
Dei’s project, Magoola says, is an attempt to rewrite that reality at its root. The Namasagali plant will consume roughly 500 metric tonnes of cassava every day, the daily harvest of about 50 acres, creating a vast, guaranteed market for farmers across Busoga, Teso, Lango and Bukedi.
Already, more than 3,000 farmers have registered as suppliers, many of them receiving cuttings of Nilocus-1, a high-yield variety developed by Ugandan scientists.
“A farmer growing cassava will
