Uganda’s coffee exports are expected to reach 3.5 million bags in 2014/15, virtually unchanged on year but lower from the 14-year high of 3.58 million bags reached in 2012/13, the managing director of the state-run Uganda Coffee Development Authority said yesterday in an interview in the capital, Kampala.
Production is also seen stable at 4 million bags, as plants are recovering slowly from last year’s drought, the industry regulator said.
“Coffee trees need time to recover,” Ngabirano said. If it had not been for trees planted in recent years starting to produce beans, “the forecast would have been lower,” he added.
Uganda plans to plant as many as 300 million coffee trees in a three-year replanting scheme aimed at boosting output and exports.
The government-funded drive is the largest in two decades as the country seeks to replace more than 150 million trees destroyed by the coffee wilt disease in the late 1990s. The program is expected to nearly double coffee exports from the East African nation over the next four to five years.
Uganda is hosting the 54th Inter-African Coffee Organisation Annual General Assembly and the 2nd African coffee Symposium from 17th to 21st November at the Kampala Serena International Conference centre.
The theme of the symposium is “unlocking the potential of the African coffee Industry” and this follows the first successful symposium held in Togo under the theme “Position, Perception and potential of African coffee” which analysed challenges facing the sector and the need for continued international cooperation to ensure a sustainable African coffee economy
Established in 1960 the IACO is an inter-governmental organization which brings together coffee producing countries in Africa with a common objective of creating a common platform to develop the coffee industry in Africa. IACO has 25 member states, representing 12 percent of the world’s coffee production.
