Uganda
Coffee is Uganda's top-earning export crop.
- Production 2024
- 402,000 tonnes
- World rank
- #6
Varieties grown here
About
Coffee is Uganda's top-earning export crop. In 1989 Uganda's coffee production capacity exceeded its quota of 2.3 million bags, but export volumes were still diminished by economic and security problems, and large amounts of coffee beans were still being smuggled out of Uganda for sale in neighbouring countries. Uganda is one of the few countries in the world with indigenous coffee, with Robusta coffee growing wild around Lake Victoria.
Some coffee farmers cultivated cocoa trees on land already producing robusta coffee. Cocoa production declined in the 1970s and 1980s, however, and market conditions discouraged international investors from viewing it as a potential counterweight to Uganda's reliance on coffee exports. Locally produced cocoa was of high quality, however, and the government continued to seek ways to rehabilitate the industry. Coffee production remained low during the late 1980s, rising from 1,000 tons in 1986 to only 5,000 tons in 1989. The Uganda Coffee Development Authority was formed in 1991 by government decree, in line with the liberalization of the coffee industry.
Robusta coffee grows natively in the Kampala forest area and the Lake Victoria Crescent. From 1999 to 2002 an effort was made to commercialize this coffee as a premium consumer brand, emulating and extending the success of shade grown in Central America. The Kibale Wild Coffee Project, an initiative that involved international organizations such as the World Bank and United States Agency for International Development, aimed to implement sustainable harvest of coffee from Uganda's natural reserves and guarantee compensation for all workers involved in the harvest. Revenue from the coffee production was intended to finance conservation management activities.
Text from the Wikipedia article Coffee production in Uganda by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0.