Coffee beans, Africa, Uganda

There is great hope for the future.

In Uganda (Uganda), Arabica coffee beans account for only 10 per cent of the country's total coffee production, but it is enough to attract attention. Uganda's best coffee is mainly produced in the mountains of Elgon and Bugisu along the Kenyan border in the north and Ruwensori in the west, and is available for export in January or February of each year.

The equator crosses Uganda and the suitable climate makes it the main producer of robusta coffee beans in the world. In the 1960s, Ugandan coffee production remained at 3.5 million bags a year. By the mid-1980s, coffee production had dropped to 250 bags a year, mainly for political reasons. But now coffee production is on the rise again, currently about 3 million bags a year. One of the main problems facing the coffee industry is that there are no good roads to transport coffee to ports such as Mombasa in Kenya or Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.

In order to improve the quality and reduce the cost of coffee, Uganda cancelled the exclusive management right of the Coffee Management Committee (Coffee Marketing Board, referred to as CMB) in November 1990. Most of the work originally undertaken by the Coffee Management Committee has now been handed over to the cooperative organization. Privatized coffee accounts for 2% of the country's export revenue, so the government imposes a tax on coffee shops, hoping to increase much-needed revenue. But instead, coffee exports fell by 20%, and coffee smuggling became more and more serious.

Like Tanzania, the rise in coffee prices in recent years has encouraged farmers to return to their estates and reclaim once-abandoned land to grow coffee, and the Ugandan coffee industry looks promising.