A few years ago, Ugandan coffee scarcely got a mention in specialty coffee circles. Producing roughly four times as much robusta than arabica, it developed a reputation for low-quality coffee that was incapable of competing on the international market.
However, Uganda’s coffee production has come of age in recent years.
A coordinated effort between government and private businesses has enabled it to leapfrog several notable coffee-producing nations not only in volume, but quality. In a 2018 survey of the top 16 coffee-growing countries in the world, Uganda was ranked third best by CQI-certified coffee tasters.
According to Herbert Mbabazi of Olam Specialty Coffee, a green coffee importer, government intervention has been a key driver.
“In 1991, the government set up a body that would manage the entire coffee industry called the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA),” explains Herbert, who works as a senior field officer. “The UCDA has a mandate of increasing production and has been doing this very well with the country’s majority smallholder producers.”
An early example of where intervention has worked was in the 1990s, when coffee farms were struck by an outbreak of coffee wilt disease. In response, the government drafted in the help of scientists to create more resilient varieties. These varieties were then distributed to farmers, which helped them manage diseases, adverse weather conditions, and produce higher yields.
More recently, the UCDA has helped set up nurseries with the goal of handing out 300 million free coffee seedlings to farmers across the country. The nursery operators both supplied and supervised the planting of the seedlings to ensure maximum results.
This is part of the government’s wider strategy to revitalise Uganda’s coffee producing sector, and introduce the scale and coordination often found in Latin American origins. In 2015, it set itself the goal of raising annual output from 3.5 million 60kg bags to 20 million. Last season’s harvest, which produced around 6.5 million 60kg bags, suggests the plan might not be as ambitious as it seems.
“We have a fully-fledged entity responsible for variety improvement that is funded by the government and its partners,” Herbert adds.
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