Field app
Android, offline first. Officers register farmers, walk plot boundaries and answer the farm questionnaire with no signal. Records sync when a connection returns.
Whstrace, the WHSPKAH flagship
Every bean traced, from the farm gate to the EU border.
Whstrace is the flagship traceability platform from WHSPKAH, built with Bwamba Cooperative Union and the German cooperation. Field officers register farmers and map plots without a signal, satellites check every plot for forest loss, and the evidence is on file when a buyer or a regulator asks.
Press release · 14 Oct 2026Inside Whstrace: how we built an EUDR compliance and traceability engine- Works
- with no signal in the field
- Checks
- every plot against satellite data
Supported byGerman cooperation, GIZ Uganda
Deployed withBwamba Cooperative Union
Made in Kampala byWHSPKAH Research and Business Network
The EU Deforestation Regulation
European buyers now have to prove where every kilogram grew.
Cocoa and coffee placed on the European market must come from land that was not cleared of forest after 2020. The proof starts with the farmer, long before an exporter files anything.
- 01
Geolocate every plot
A GPS point for small plots and a polygon for plots over four hectares, captured on the farm and kept with photos of the boundary points.
- 02
Show that no forest was cleared
Each plot is checked against forest cover and tree-cover loss since the 31 December 2020 cut-off, and against protected areas.
- 03
Keep the evidence
The due diligence statement, the records behind it and the history of every change have to be available to the authorities for five years.
Many smallholder supply chains still begin with a paper register. Whstrace builds this file while the cocoa is being bought, plot by plot.
One platform for the field, the cooperative and the compliance desk.
The same records feed an Android app in the officer's hand, an admin console in the cooperative office and the due diligence file a buyer reads.
Admin console
The registry, cooperatives, field officers and questionnaires, with every change attributed to a person.
Compliance engine
Every boundary is checked against forest and satellite data, and the verdict is stored with its evidence.
Supply chain
Deliveries, signed receipts, grading, quality and what is owed to suppliers.
Due diligence packages
The file a buyer can open on the day it is asked for.
Plots, verdicts, satellite evidence, receipts and statement references are assembled into one package per shipment, each with its own checksum.
Compliance, built in
Best-in-class compliance, from the very first GPS point.
Most tools bolt compliance on at the port. Whstrace builds it in where the cocoa grows, so every line of a due diligence statement points back to a plot, a satellite check and a signature that nobody can rewrite.
A farm's boundary, its verdict, the datasets behind it and a second opinion, on one screen.
Know the land
Plot geolocation that holds up when someone drives out to check it.
- GPS boundary capture point by point, each with its accuracy and a photo of the corner
- A point or a polygon chosen for every plot, following the EUDR plot-size rule
- Boundaries that cross themselves are caught on the phone, before they reach the file
- Overlaps with neighbouring farmers' plots flagged automatically
- Area calculated from the boundary itself, never from what someone remembers
Ask the satellites
Deforestation screening that reads the same data regulators read.
- Forest cover at the 31 December 2020 cut-off, from the European Commission's JRC map
- Tree-cover loss since 2021 from Global Forest Watch
- Integrated deforestation alerts raised after the cut-off
- Protected-area overlap tested against OpenStreetMap boundaries
- An independent second opinion from FAO Open Foris Whisp, set beside our own verdict
- Sentinel-2 imagery from Copernicus kept with the plot
A verdict you can defend
Every answer arrives with its reasons, its sources and a fingerprint.
- Clear verdicts: compliant, needs review, not compliant, with the reasons spelled out
- Each assessment stored as a record that is never overwritten, sealed with a SHA-256 fingerprint
- The datasets, their versions and the analysed area recorded with every result
- Versioned rules: when the rules change, affected plots are queued for a fresh check
- Re-checks triggered by a changed boundary or an ageing assessment, not by a stray click
- Doubtful and non-compliant plots routed straight to a review queue, with the evidence attached
Paperwork that checks itself
Legality evidence with expiry dates, owners and a second pair of eyes.
- Land tenure and legality documents attached to each farm, with issue and expiry dates
- An expiry scanner that warns before a document lapses
- Verification by a second person, so nobody approves their own upload
- Cooperative attestations tracked alongside titles and permits
- Signed risk assessments and mitigations recorded against every farm
Bean to buyer
Supply chain records that carry compliance forward at every step.
- Deliveries recorded with the farmers behind them and their EUDR eligibility at the moment of purchase
- Receipts signed with a one-time code, so a delivery cannot be disowned later
- Grading into lots, with quality checks and photos
- Payables tracked against each supplier
- Buyers registered with their country and their own due diligence files
The file regulators ask for
Due diligence packages that assemble themselves.
- One package per shipment: plots, verdicts, satellite evidence and signed receipts together
- The statement reference attached, ready to quote
- GeoJSON of every plot included, with the evidence available to download
- Every package fingerprinted; a correction is a new package, never a quiet edit
- Reports by cooperative, subcounty and field officer for the people who manage the programme
Impossible to quietly change
Trust that comes from the design, not from promises.
- An append-only audit log where every entry carries the hash of the one before it
- One-click verification that walks the whole chain and names the first entry that does not match
- Every change attributed to a named person or field officer
- Role-based permissions; field officers are confined to the records they registered
- A data review queue for duplicates, held records and findings, with each decision recorded
- Versioned questionnaires, with the forest baseline answers filled by the system rather than typed
How we built it
Five decisions that make the data hold up.
We started from the field, where connections drop and phones are modest, and worked toward the file a regulator reads. Each layer was built so the next one could trust it.
01 / 05Start where the cocoa grows
An app that never waits for a signal
The field app is built offline first. Every farmer, farm and answer is saved on the phone before anything is sent, and a queue retries in the background until the server confirms it. A dropped connection can never create a duplicate farmer.
- Runs on
- Entry-level Android phones
- Saved
- On the phone, first
- Unlocks with
- PIN or fingerprint
02 / 05Capture the land, not only the name
Boundaries walked on foot, questions that change without an update
Officers walk the edge of each plot and the phone records every point with its accuracy and a photo. The farm questionnaire is data, not code: a new version is published once and every phone downloads it at the next sign-in.
- Per point
- GPS fix, accuracy, photo
- Checked
- Self-crossing boundaries
- Questionnaire
- Versioned, no app release
03 / 05Ask the satellites
Every plot is checked against forest data, and the answer is kept
The compliance engine measures forest cover at the 2020 cut-off, tree-cover loss and deforestation alerts since, overlap with protected areas and with other farmers' plots. A second opinion comes from a separate analysis. The verdict is stored with its evidence and a SHA-256 fingerprint.
- Verdicts
- Compliant, needs review, not compliant
- Evidence
- Stored, never overwritten
- Rechecked
- When a boundary changes
04 / 05Make quiet edits impossible
A history that proves itself
Every change to a farm, a receipt or a verdict is written to an append-only log where each entry carries the hash of the one before it. One check walks the whole chain and names the first entry that does not match. Field officers only ever see the records they registered.
- Audit log
- Hash-chained, append-only
- Receipts
- Signed with a one-time code
- Access
- Role based, officer scoped
05 / 05Hand over the file
Due diligence packages, ready per shipment
Deliveries are graded into lots and lots are packaged for a buyer: the plots behind them, their verdicts, the evidence, the receipts and the statement reference, each package with its own checksum. Cooperatives and buyers read from the same records.
- Per shipment
- One package
- Reference
- Statement reference attached
- Reports
- Per cooperative and officer
Small pieces, each doing one job, all writing to one trusted record.
The platform is organised by domain, so the compliance engine, the supply chain and the audit chain can change without touching each other. Everything lands in one trusted record, with the files and satellite results kept beside it.
Field app
Saves first, syncs when it can.
Admin console
Role based.
Whstrace platform
Organised by domain.
Records and files
One trusted record, with the evidence stored beside it.
Outside intelligence
Copernicus, Global Forest Watch, Whisp, Mapbox, OpenStreetMap.
We build on the best open Earth data, and credit where it comes from.
Whstrace does not guess at deforestation. It asks the same public datasets and services that regulators and researchers trust, and keeps each answer with the evidence.
Sentinel-2 satellite imagery
Copernicus
Optical imagery of each plot, from the European Union's Earth observation programme.
Sentinel mission
European Space Agency
The Sentinel satellites that supply the Copernicus imagery.
Tree-cover loss and alerts
Global Forest Watch
Tree-cover loss since 2021 and integrated deforestation alerts, read through the GFW Data API.
Forest cover in 2020
European Commission, JRC
The Global Forest Cover 2020 map used as the EUDR baseline.
Second opinion
FAO Open Foris Whisp
An independent deforestation risk analysis that we compare with our own verdict.
Maps and satellite basemap
Mapbox
The maps and satellite layers in the admin console.
Protected areas
OpenStreetMap
Protected-area boundaries that every plot is tested against.
Logos and names belong to their owners and are shown to credit the data and services Whstrace uses. Their appearance here does not imply endorsement.
The field app
Built for a long day on a hillside, not an office.
Field officers carry the traceability system in their pocket. The app was tested on entry-level Android phones, on mobile data that comes and goes.
Works with no signal
Locations, cooperatives and the questionnaire are downloaded at sign-in, so a day in the hills needs no connection.
Opens with a touch
A returning officer is greeted by name and unlocks with a fingerprint or a PIN.
Syncs without duplicates
Each record carries its own id, so a retry after a dropped connection updates it instead of adding a copy.
In use today
Bwamba Cooperative Union runs on it.
Bwamba Cooperative Union and its member cooperatives use Whstrace to register their growers, map their land and prepare cocoa for European buyers. What the field team collects is the same record the compliance desk reads.
- Farmers tracked
10k+ - Farms mapped
20k+ - Cooperatives
80+ - Field officers
60+
Newsroom
The latest from the field and the engine room.
Press release
Inside Whstrace: how we built an EUDR compliance and traceability engine
A technical look at Whstrace: an offline-first field app, PostGIS plot checks against satellite data, a hash-chained audit log, and what comes next for other crops.
Read the release
Press release
Building Whstrace, from the first farm visit to 10,000 farmers
How WHSPKAH and Bwamba Cooperative Union built Whstrace, a cocoa traceability platform for EU deforestation rules, with funding support from GIZ.
Read the release
Why this is the future of agricultural traceability in Africa
TraceabilityinAfricashouldnotdependonaconsultantwithaclipboard.Itshouldliveinsidethecooperative,onthephoneinthefieldofficer'spocket,andinarecordthatnobodycanquietlyedit.Whentheevidenceisbuiltwherethecropgrows,thefarmerstopsbeinganameonaspreadsheetandbecomesthefirstlinkinasupplychainthatcanproveitself.
01
Built for the connection that exists
Offline first is the starting point, not a feature added later. The app saves locally and the sync catches up.
02
Evidence before assertions
A plot is compliant because a dated satellite check says so, stored with its fingerprint, not because someone ticked a box.
03
Local teams can run it
Cooperatives manage their own members and officers. The people who know the land stay in charge of the records.
04
Ready for the next crop
Cocoa came first. Coffee, vanilla and other EUDR commodities use the same plots, questionnaires and checks.
About WHSPKAH
A Kampala consultancy that turns ideas into working businesses and systems.
WHSPKAH Research and Business Network Ltd. advises organisations on business development, software development and project management, and delivers the work alongside them. Whstrace is our flagship product: it came out of working with Bwamba Cooperative Union and the German cooperation on what traceability needs to look like in the field.
Business development
Market and value-chain strategy, partnerships and the business case behind an idea.
Software development
Custom systems designed with the people who will use them, from first sketch to running service.
Project management
Plans, budgets and delivery for programmes that involve donors, cooperatives and field teams.
Advisory services
Research, policy and compliance advice, including readiness for the EU deforestation regulation.
With the support of
German cooperation made the first deployment possible.
Whstrace was developed with the support of GIZ in Uganda, working with Bwamba Cooperative Union to put traceability in the hands of the people who grow the cocoa.
Book a demo
See your cooperative's supply chain in Whstrace.
We will walk you through the field app, the compliance checks and a due diligence package, using records that look like yours.
- katoabdulhakim68@gmail.com
- +256 774 139 145
- Kampala, Uganda