Prime
Buganda joins Nucafe to boost coffee production
The Katikkiro (Prime Minister) of Buganda Charles Mayiga (centre) promotes Mwanyi Terimba Ltd. Photo/Michael J Ssali
What you need to know:
- Nucafe and Buganda Kingdom have agreed to come up with innovations of coffee products branded with the Kingdom’s totems and counties.
- They will jointly own seedlings farms and nursery beds apart from supporting independent campaigns of either party concerning farming, promoting, and production of coffee.
Buganda Kingdom, through Buganda Investments and Commercial Undertakings Limited (BICUL) and National Union of Coffee Agribusiness and Farm Enterprises (Nucafe) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to boost coffee production and to improve household incomes for coffee farmers by positioning them well in the coffee value chain.
Robert Mugenyi Musenze, chief executive officer of Buganda Cultural and Development Foundation Limited, (BUCADEF) has told Seeds of Gold, “We appreciate the work methods and objectives of Nucafe and their effort to boost coffee production and coffee farmers’ household incomes. So we believe that the working relationship that we have started will further increase farmers’ incomes and general welfare.”
Sustaining coffee farms
Musenze is of the view, for example, that Nucafe is well positioned to help coffee farmers with such issues as planning to sustain coffee farms as family enterprises even after the death of the head of the family. He also mentioned the emphasis that Nucafe lays on coffee ownership by the farmers.
For some time now Mwanyi Terimba Ltd has been buying coffee from farmers’ groups and exporting it.
Value addition
“We are looking at value addition which will make our coffee more attractive and more valuable,” says Charles Kironde, chief executive officer of Mwanyi Terimba Ltd. “Nucafe has very good coffee grading equipment at Namanve in Kampala where we also have offices and a warehouse for our coffee. By establishing a formalised working relationship with Nucafe, as we have done, we hope to grade coffee collected from the farmers using Nucafe’s equipment and to export it at a lot better prices. This also means better prices for the farmers among other benefits,” says Kironde.
Purpose of Mwanyi Terimba
Mwanyi Terimba Ltd under Buganda Kingdom undertakes to sensitise grass root farmers about the importance of good seed selection, proper agronomy, and hygienic postharvest handling of the crop in order to compete well for high international prices.
“This is the reason that we are telling our farmers to plant cloned Robusta coffee seedlings sourced from licensed coffee nurseries. This results in large coffee beans which are preferred by buyers on the export market. Apart from that, cloned coffee is much higher yielding and fruition takes place much, much, earlier than the so-called elite varieties,” Kironde explains.
Joseph Nkandu, the executive director of Nucafe, told Seeds of Gold, “We could not find a better partner to work with in the central region than the Buganda Kingdom.”
He said by teaming up with Nucafe, Buganda Kingdom is set to harness better utilisation of resources and entrepreneurial talent for the benefit of all coffee farmers in the region. “In Nucafe we have well trained manpower in coffee production and processing apart from the infrastructure consisting of factories and machinery for primary, processing, secondary processing, and tertiary processing,” says Nkandu.
Nkandu says Nucafe has a strong historical track record on policy advocacy, having successfully engaged the government of Uganda to come up with the first ever National Coffee Policy 2013 and the National Coffee Act 2021.
“We can now institute legal proceedings against people mishandling the coffee crop which was not possible before,” he says. He further notes that the establishment of more than 200 community based coffee farmer associations and cooperatives have made Nucafe a numerically strong representative of coffee farmers in the country. In the recent few years Nucafe introduced a new way of spacing Robusta coffee trees in the garden that can double coffee productivity per acre.
Gerald Ssendaula, Chairman of Nucafe and former Minister of Finance, has welcomed the move by Buganda Kingdom. “We have the machinery and the equipment to add value to coffee which can be taken advantage of by BUCADEF and Mwanyi Terimba Ltd to boost farmers’ incomes,” he says.
“We have a coffee processing factory at Lwamaggwa in Rakai District. We have another one at Kabonera in Masaka District. Then we have a state of the art factory at Namanve in Kampala where we process coffee for export. So Buganda Kingdom could not get a better partner than Nucafe because, after all we almost have similar objectives.”
The deal
According to the memorandum of understanding signed at Bulange recently, Buganda Kingdom and Nucafe will jointly participate in activities concerning farming, promoting and production of coffee organised by both parties.
The two will further jointly participate and organise training sessions for coffee farmers and dealers across the coffee value chain as well as exchanging learning programs between both parties.
The two will come up with innovations of coffee products branded with the Kingdom’s totems, counties, etc. They will jointly own seedlings farms and nursery beds apart from supporting independent campaigns of either party concerning farming, promotion, and production of coffee.
