Buganda gets nod to sell coffee to China
A man spreads coffee beans in the sun recently. PHOTO/ FILE
What you need to know:
- With farmers paying more attention to their crops and more people venturing into coffee production and turning formerly idle land into coffee plantations, government projects that the country could produce more than 9 million bags of coffee and earn far more money in foreign currency than it did the previous year.
- The chairperson Board of Directors of Mwanyi Terimba Limited, Mr Daniel Damulira, said their first consignment to China through China through China Communication Construction Company (CCCC) went last week.
The government has cleared Mwanyi Terimba Limited, one of the business arms of the Buganda Kingdom, to export coffee beans to China. In a November 14 letter, Mr Paul Mwambu, the commissioner of crop inspection and certification under the National Plant Protection Organisation (NPPO) in the Ministry of Agriculture, said the approval followed a sanitary and phytosanitary systems (SPS) audit, confirming that Mwanyi Terimba Limited meet all the required standards for export.
“This is to certify that in accordance with the Plant Protection and Health Act, 2026, and its attendant import and export regulations, Mwanyi Terimba Limited has been approved to export coffee beans to China under registration number UG/GACC/2024/0063,” the letter addressed to managers of the company reads in part. However, Mr Mwambu said Wanyi Terimba Limited will be subjected to continuous inspections and audits to ensure compliance with relevant sanitary and phytosanitary requirements.
“The registration certificate is valid for one year and may be renewed upon application,” the letter adds Buganda Kingdom is a key critic of the government’s recent decision to disband the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) and transfer its functions to the Ministry of Agriculture under the ongoing rationalisation of agencies. The chairperson Board of Directors of Mwanyi Terimba Limited, Mr Daniel Damulira, said their first consignment to China through China through China Communication Construction Company (CCCC) went last week. “We will be exporting both roasted coffee beans and green coffee and the next batch is expected soon,” he said in a telephone interview yesterday.
However, Mr Damulira declined to reveal how much coffee they have so far exported to China, explaining that it is only one container. But he is upbeat about the development, saying plans are also already underway to set up a factory that can add value to coffee beans in Nakisunga, Mukono District. In 2016, Buganda launched the Mwanyi Terimba initiative to promote coffee production in the kingdom as one of the strategies to fight household poverty among Kabaka’s subjects.
Many farmers positively responded to kingdom’s the call. UCDA signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the kingdom from which 10 million seedlings were distributed to farmers across Buganda which has helped to boost the growing of the crop. According to the Ministry of Agriculture’s latest report, Buganda region is the leading coffee producer in Uganda contributing a total of 3,173,854 bags of Robusta coffee in the Financial Year 2023/2024, followed by Rwenzori, which had both Arabica and Robusta (914,675 bags).
But President Museveni, while defending the decision to disband UCDA, said it is the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) that revived and expanded coffee production across the country as it did for all the other products. “If there are problems like the one with tea now, we shall sit with the stakeholders, discuss and get solutions, using rational solutions. Long live the rationalisation,” he said in a statement last month.
He said Uganda currently earns $900 million from the 9 million bags of coffee currently being exported, up from the 2 million bags in 1986, but with value addition- roasting, grinding and packing “ we shall earn, may be, 15 times more from the same quantum of raw materials.”
“I have told you before, that the global coffee value is $ 460b. Africa gets only $ 2.5b of this. Why do some actors appear to be satisfied with this? I am not satisfied with $900 million,” the President said. Of the 115 top coffee-producing districts in Uganda, 25 are in Buganda.
FUTURE PLANS
Projections
With farmers paying more attention to their crops and more people venturing into coffee production and turning formerly idle land into coffee plantations, government projects that the country could produce more than 9 million bags of coffee and earn far more money in foreign currency than it did the previous year. There is hope that the Coffee Roadmap target of producing 20 million 60 kg bags by 2030 will be achieved much earlier than it was originally projected.
