Equipping youth to grow and earn from coffee

Ogwang (centre) explains how he grows coffee on his garden.  Photo / Edgar R. Batte

What you need to know:

  • From the database, the company can produce between 500 and 700 tonnes of clean green coffee cherry. At gate price, they do a five percent margin above the prevailing market price at any time which is tied to the quality of the coffee.

In 2017, Boby Ogwang undertook a study to understand sustainability of the Uganda coffee industry; how the future of the coffee industry would look like .

Through the study his team from Mara Agribusiness Limited, talked to key stakeholders in the coffee sector- the smallholder farmers, the mid-level dealers, people who buy coffee from farmers, middlemen and the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) the regulator of the sector.

Coffee is Uganda’s top agricultural export commodity fetching good foreign exchange earning for the economy.

Findings

From Ogwang’s findings, the sector is dominated by an aging population, of 50 years and above.

The youth are leaving rural areas for towns and cities where they struggle to find employment.

“If the young people are not taking up coffee gardens from their parents, the sustainability of the coffee sector could be doomed. To ensure the future of the sector, the youth must be integrated into coffee farming,” the agricultural graduate observes.

Technology

In 2018, Mara designed a project dubbed the ‘Youth Smart Services’. In 2021, it was revised to ‘Youth4Youth’.

The idea was that the youth with a smartphone and application that provides extension information, would provide advisory services to farmers at a fee so that the love for technology would attract them and the motivation of the money would encourage them to continue.

“We implemented that. It didn’t work very well because no farmer was willing to pay for extension services. The farmers believe they know in traditional way, which is not the most scientific way, so we saw challenges in that project and then modified it to do coffee advisory and coffee agro-input,” he says.

Quality inputs

“Also, the chance that they would get fake or low-quality inputs was also very high, so we decided to establish agro input stores near the farmer locations. In 2019, we put up five rural agro input stores supplying quality inputs in Mayuge, Kamuli, Luweero, Masaka and Mityana,” says Ogwang. Mara incorporated trained youths from Bukalasa Agricultural College and Makerere University after the observation that most of the agro input stores established in the rural areas, were run by people who were not trained, and professionally not agriculturalists.

The untrained had no knowledge and skills of handling agro inputs. Ogwang established a model of recruiting people with a background in agriculture and then training them and getting them certified in input handling. The certification is done by Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Fisheries (MAAIF) and the training is handled by Makerere University on behalf of the ministry.

“They can operate the input store and provide advisory services to farmers, so if they have a problem that requires an input of pruning,”  says Ogwang.

Training farmers

“In February 2019, we attended a training on coffee agronomy organised by Mara in order to equip us with the knowledge as far as coffee gaps are concerned. Then I was recruited as an intern for Coffee Advisory Services in Mityana District. I was introduced to the district leaders and started working with different coffee farming groups, youth groups and school coffee clubs,” Frank Kiwanuka recounts.  He was on internship for six months where he received knowledge on agro chemicals. In September 2019, he signed his first professional contract with Mara as Coffee Advisory Field Officers (CAFOs) and a business entrepreneur of an agro-input shop in Mityana District.

Kiwanuka adds that working with Mara has opened doors to many things like thinking innovatively, creating jobs for my fellow youth, being positive to any situation, being effective, result oriented and always keep your marginal productivity positive.  Mara is a social enterprise that works with youth farmers to improve their livelihoods by providing quality agro inputs. Last year, Mara approached big coffee buyers for a good price to incentivise them.

Marketing and prices

There was no relief for market because as he found out, the price of coffee is determined at the world market.

There was a brainstorm but with no solution for Ogwang’s company decided to take the risk which involved walking to the youthful farmer and buying their coffee at an incentivised price, processing it into a final product and marketing it.

The final price a consumer pays goes back to Mara Agro business Ltd so they have the control of the margin they can give back the farmers. That gave birth to Aramah Coffee.

“I am marketing the coffee. The challenge we have is locally the consumption is low but I have a very big network of youth so I am only able to buy from very few of the farmers simply because I am not able to sell much so right now I am looking for a bigger market in hotels, restaurants, cafes and corporate consumers so that the volume I can sell increases and I can buy from the network of farmers 747 youth farmers in our data base.” From the database, the company can produce between 500 and 700 tonnes of clean green coffee cherry. At gate price, they do a five percent margin above the prevailing market price at any time which is tied to the quality of the coffee.

Ogwang started with 28 youth in 2018 and roughly five members per district. At the beginning of every year, the company would share the criteria and it was the youth would recruit fellow members.

“They would know people who are likeminded and willing to join the group and showed interest. We would vet and come up with a new list. In 2019, the number rose from 28 to 412. In 2020, it rose to 747. We’ve since stopped that because with the number, we are not yet able to buy all the coffee from them given the market which we are currently concentrating on. After that, if the market is demanding more, we can enrol more.

Mara processes its coffee at Consortium for enhancing University Responsiveness to Agribusiness Development Limited- Curad, a coffee incubator run as a public-private partnership initiative in Kabanyolo where the Makerere University Agricultural Research Institute is situated. Mara is registered as an incubate under Curad which runs a good processing line. It processes the coffee and Mara does the packaging.

About Mara

Mara is a social enterprise that works with youth farmers to improve their livelihoods by providing quality agro inputs. Last year, Mara approached big coffee buyers for a good price to incentivise them.