Quick focus: Uganda

Could we being see a shift in power in Uganda?

At the beginning of the week the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) came out and made the bold claim that the best coffee grown in the country is to be found in the Lira District and that the region is on course to become the leading producer of coffee.

Estimates suggest that Ugandan coffee provides the country with around $500 million per year in export revenues, making it the agricultural crop of choice – and the most important one at that.

Speaking at the recent Inter Africa Coffee Organisation Conference, the UCDA Quality and Regulatory Manager, Edmund Kananura Kyerere, stated that the major growing areas of Kasese and Sebei were beginning to stagnate. A limited area of land available was given as the primary reason for this decline in production.

But whilst these long-standing areas for production are suffering problems maintaining previous levels, plantations in the Lira District are quite literally blooming.

“Last year, Lira produced the best coffee in the north,” Kyere said at the continental conference.

“We have limited land to grow [coffee in the south] but the results we are getting from Northern Uganda are interesting,” he continued.

In addition to making the comments about the qualities of the Ugandan regions and the troubles that they are potentially facing, Kyere also took time to discuss trends and shifts that were occurring in the domestic market. Youths, he says, are beginning to see coffee as a luxurious fashion item and as a result the numbers of coffee shops are rising.

“Five years ago, we had only six cafes in Uganda but today [there] are more than seventy,” he noted.

In addition to this coffee shop boom, the number of products available to retail customers is also steadily increasing.