Our Story · Kodi Pa Lyec
A movement,
planted in red soil.
The Northern Uganda Farm Festival began as a farm walk and became a regional gathering. This is how — and why — the North is telling its own story now, on its own land, with its own drums.
Mission
Make the North
the answer.
For too long, Northern Uganda has been discussed in past tense — a place things happened to. NUFF is a two-day, deliberate present tense: the North telling agribusiness, culture and youth its own answer to what the region becomes next.
We gather founders, farmers, artists, chefs, investors and neighbours on a working farm in Gulu, and let the conversation happen where the work actually happens — between the rows, under the mango trees, around the fire.
“Seeds don't argue with the soil. They just grow.”
— Kodi Pa Lyec, festival theme
Four pillars
What NUFF is actually about.
Every stage, tent and tasting menu answers back to one of these.
Agribusiness first
The North's future is planted, not imported. Every stage, every talk, every meal points at the same thing — turning the soil under our feet into livelihoods.
Heritage, alive
Acholi and Lango culture is not a museum piece. Bwola, Larakaraka, Odii and Malakwang are the everyday grammar of a region that never stopped being itself.
A generation, rising
Founders under 35 are already rebuilding the North. NUFF puts them on the same stage as the elders, the artists and the investors who need to meet them.
Land as legacy
TEGOT's 25-acre forest is protected on purpose. The festival exists to make caring for the land the loudest thing at the party.
From walk to movement
The seven-year seed.
2019
A single farm walk
Beatrice Mao hosts a small group of agripreneurs on TEGOT's fields. The conversation runs past sundown. Someone says, out loud, this should be a festival.
2022
The name arrives
Elders bless the vision with an Acholi phrase — Kodi Pa Lyec, Seeds of Greatness — and a movement gets a language.
2024
The first gathering
A pilot weekend brings 400 attendees, three drum troupes and a fireside pitch competition. Every ticket sold.
2026
Two days · one region
December 11–12: main-stage concerts, an agripreneur summit, a forest amphitheatre and a working farm open to the country.
Bwola circles at dusk
TEGOT working fields
The protected 25 acres
The people
Who's holding it.
Beatrice Mao
Host & Festival Director
Custodian of TEGOT Farmstead. Entrepreneur, farmer, connector of people to land.
Programming Council
Culture · Music · Summit
A rotating council of Acholi and Lango artists, chefs and founders who shape each edition.
The Forest Team
Land, Stewardship & Safety
Rangers, agronomists and volunteers who keep the 25-acre canopy — and every guest — safe.
Come for the vibe.
Leave with a village.
You now know the why. Meet the who, where and when.