The Uganda coffee story is one of resilience characterized by slumps that are subdued every time one of Uganda biggest
foreign exchange earners recovers.
The impact of climate change, diseases and the
shifting growth priorities have eaten into Uganda’s coffee production story,
especially in the last one decade.
According to data from Uganda Coffee Development
Authority (UCDA), coffee production started to experience intermittent volumes
at the fold of the 90s, slightly recovering in the mid-2000s before mildly
sliding back into instability.
However, current data indicates production and
quality continue to move northwards by an average of 7 per cent per annum,
which has boosted both exports and farmer incomes.
According to a UCDA report for the month of
September, coffee exports between October 2016 and September 2017 fetched 4.61
million bags worth $545m (about Shs1.96 trillion). This is compared to about
3.32 million bags worth $326.7m (about Shs1.1 trillion) over the same period in
the previous year.
The recovery, analysts believe, has been a result
of sustained approaches that continue to point to the importance of coffee as a
key revenue factor in Uganda’s economic trajectory.
According to Mr
Ramathan Ggoobi, an economics lecturer at Makerere University Business School,
the government has had programmes that seek to uplift coffee production
volumes. Such programmes, he says, have targeted small holder farmers who
continuously graduate into larger producers as their incomes improve.
“The volumes are
benefiting from campaigns such as Operation Wealth Creation and Naads [that
distributes free coffee seedlings] through which government has been able to
engage small holder farmers,” Ggoobi says.
The growth, according
to UCDA, has been supported by a strong performance of some coffee varieties,
especially Robusta whose export volumes stood at 3.62 million bags with a net
worth of $405.48m (Shs1.5 trillion).
Revenue from Arabica
coffee
Arabica coffee fetched
0.99 million bags worth $139.99m (Shs508b). The boom is equally
attributed to deliberate trade facilitation initiatives such as the 2016
roll-out of the Uganda Electronic Single Window; a paperless platform that
leverages on technology to facilitate private sector trade. The system allows
electronic submission of information, documentations and processing of import,
export and transit related trade documents plus requests; thus, reducing both
time and costs involved in the clearance process.
In an email exchange
recently, Ms Laura Walusimbi, the UCDA corporate communications manager,
indicated that the current volumes are not by mistake but a deliberate plan
that has stretched about three years since 2014.
“The 57.4 million
coffee seedlings planted between 2013 and 2014 are starting to yield. This was
almost triple the 19.6 million seedlings that were planted between 2012 and
2013,” she said, explaining the current northern movements of the coffee
volumes.
However, she is also
cognisant of other factors, key among them the Uganda Electronic Single Window,
which according to the most recent August performance report had processed and
cleared more than 12,000 coffee export permits.
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