By Dorothy Nakaweesi *
South Korea has joined the list of countries that buy Uganda’s coffee, a move that development experts say will enhance the farmers’ income and also enable branding of the country in the Asian market.
Caffebene, a South Korean-based global coffee house, has agreed to buy graded coffee from members of National Union of Coffee Agribusinesses and Farm Enterprises (Nucafe), an umbrella organisation that promotes value addition and teamwork among coffee farmers.
Breakthrough
The company has a presence in more than 1,600 locations worldwide with a franchise that leads the consumer trend in the coffee market.
Already, the first consignment of 20 metric tonnes of specialty terrestrial (regionally selected) has been shipped to South Korea.
The second consignment of more than 80 metric tonnes will be exported between February and May this year, according to Joseph Nkandu, the executive director, Nucafe.
“This is a breakthrough that farmers are making as a fruit of operating within the framework of the Farmer Ownership Model,” he adds.
Growing the market
A Caffebene team was in Uganda to take a pick on the country’s leading export earner.
“We have moved across the country and ascertained the quality controls that farmers undertake while taking care of coffee, we are further convinced by the processing and grading of the coffees as well as the taste,” said Choo Seung Min, a barista and team business manager at Caffeebene, on his experience of Uganda’s coffee after visiting a farming community.
He described his company’s move to start buying coffee from Uganda as a key milestone.
This is especially that the firm has had a role in encouraging smallholder farmers that accumulate coffee volumes through aggregation, a big boost in growing the coffee agribusiness market.
“Uganda’s coffee is highly competitive because of its rich aroma and will attract more buyers,” notes Rita Kyamuhangire, the project coordinator, Centre of Robusta Excellence at Uganda Coffee Development Authority, about Caffebene’s market.
Shared value
Nucafe enables farmers to achieve shared value with responsible buyers from their farming as opposed to being at the mercy of exploitative middlemen.
The organisation comprises more than 180 coffee farmer associations and cooperatives.
These are mobilised from about 200,000 households that share knowledge and skills on all aspects of having an equitable share of the benefits from coffee.
“We have examples of farmers who used to sell their coffee even before harvesting, but started selling graded coffee after getting Nucafe membership. Farmers aggregate tonnage enough to boost their bargaining power owing to the large economies of scale,” Nkandu explains.
He is optimistic that quality control issues will be dealt with via the National Coffee Policy. This would be enhanced with a national coffee law in place.
Who buys the coffee?
Besides South Korea, Nucafe farmers are exporting their coffee directly to buyers in Italy and the European Union (EU).
Apart from EU, which is the leading market on the list, other countries where Uganda’s coffee is highly demanded include Sudan, US, India, Morocco, Russia, Switzerland, Mexico, South Africa, Singapore and Australia.
Coffee has been contributing an annual average of 20 per cent of the total export revenue in the past decade.
More than 1.5 million households are involved in production and the yields stand at 2,500kg per hectare for clonal coffee, 700kg per hectare for Robusta coffee and 600kg per hectare for Arabica coffee.
