300 million coffee seedlings to be distributed
Dr Rugunda (R) with Mr Nicolas Tamari, the managing director of SUCAFINA, a green coffee trading company based in Geneva.
What you need to know:
He said the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) was leading the crusade to revamp Uganda’s coffee production capacity.
The Prime Minister, Dr Ruhakana Rugunda has said the government will supply an additional 300 million coffee seedlings to farmers in the next three years in a bid to double the country’s coffee exports.
“We who are old hands at coffee production should ensure more seedlings are distributed and I can assure you that we are going to double the production in the next three years,” Dr Rugunda said.
Dr Rugunda was meeting international coffee processors who paid him a courtesy call at his office on Tuesday. Luc Volatier, senior vice president and Jan Luehmann, vice president, both of D. E Master Blenders, a multinational coffee roaster based in the Netherlands, were on the team.
He said the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) was leading the crusade to revamp Uganda’s coffee production capacity.
The Prime Minister called for continued cooperation among various coffee stakeholders for mutual benefi.
He, however, urged them to intensify value addition and industry predictability activities among farmers.
UCDA has distributed up to 36 million coffee seedlings this year alone, aiming to increase current production from 3.5 million bags per year to 10 million bags.
The UCDA Managing Director, Mr Henry Ngabirano said coffee exports by Uganda, Africa’s second-biggest grower, may be little changed in 2014-15 from last season because coffee plants were recovering slowly from drought.
The country’s major coffee planting campaign started in 1994 to replace trees that were affected by the coffee wilt disease which destroyed at least 150 million trees. Last year’s exports declined from a 14-year high of 3.58 million bags due to drought.
Led by Nicolas Tamari, the managing director at SUCAFINA, a green coffee trading company based in Geneva, the processors are in Kampala to attend the 54th African Coffee Symposium that will look into ways of revamping coffee production in Africa.
SUCAFINA is locally represented in Uganda by Kailash Natani, managing director of Ugacof, a European coffee exporting company, who also attended the meeting. Tamari thanked the government for its commitment to improving the quality of coffee.
He said the focus on the nascent oil and gas sector should not push agriculture, including coffee whose production had started picking up, into oblivion.
