We won a top 3 position in the FAO Zambia and Bongohive Facility for Action for Climate Empowerment to Achieve Nationally Determined Contributions (FACE NDC) Challenge for our Forest Pack, which helps farmers plant trees at scale affordably.
The 5-week challenge attracted 150 applicants and 10 finalists. Startup founders in Zambia went through a design sprint to sharpen their ideas in Agriculture, Renewable Energy, and Forestry before pitching to a panel of judges where we came out top 3. We will undergo another 5 weeks of business capacity development before recieving seed funding to scale our Forest Pack Innovation.
Landowners in Zambia who want to plant trees at scale lack commercial access to indigenous tree seeds. You cannot walk into a Shoprite or Choppies and buy a kilogram of Musekese seeds, they are simply not available. Our solution to this problem is a 1 kg Forest Pack contains more than 2,500 indigenous tree seeds that can cover a hectare of land. By planting the seeds directly in the ground, farmers cut out seedlings entirely, which cost up to K90,000 per hectare and are difficult and expensive to transport to remote areas.
We learned this through our own experience. After failing to plant trees using seedlings on our our first reforestation project, we started collecting and packaging indigenous seeds ourselves. In March 2026, we planted 10,000 musangu (Faidherbia albida) trees in Chisengo village in Chongwe District using just four Forest Packs. The Zambia Daily Mail and Times of Zambia covered the story. Since December 2025, we have sold more than 50 Forest Packs to customers in Lusaka, Mazabuka, Solwezi, Mfuwe, and Chipata reforesting more than 50 hectares of degraded land.
The Forest Pack is a tool for both climate action and poverty eradication. It helps farmers grow indigenous trees such as Mutondo (Julbernardia paniculata), a miombo species where one hectare stores up to 3.5 tonnes of carbon in the soil per year. At the same time, we employ more than 20 villagers as seed collectors in Chongwe and other areas across Zambia, paying them to gather seeds between July and November when trees drop them. Some of the people we work with are charcoal makers. We have noticed that they cut less charcoal during the months when they are earning from seed collection, which tells us that a reliable income reduces the pressure on them to cut trees.
The FACE NDC Challenge was supported by the German International Climate Initiative (IKI) and carried out by UNITAR, UNZA, CBU, and Bongohive to find practical, scalable solutions for climate awareness, green jobs, and community impact.
The seed funding we will recieve will go toward expanding our seed collector network, running Facebook advertising to reach more farmers and landowners, improving our branding and packaging, and building an online page where people can order and pay for Forest Packs directly.
We want reforestation to be as simple as buying a bag of seeds. That is still the goal.
To order a Forest Pack or get in touch, reach us at greengoldsocialofficial@gmail.com or call +260965976490
