Go almost anywhere in Uganda, from the shores of Lake Victoria, to the foothills of the snow capped Mountains of the Moon, to the forested banks of the great river Nile, and you enter the world of the traditional village homestead, or ‘Kibanjja’ or Shamba'. There you will observe a way of life unchanged by modern agricultural techniques, where naturally fertile soils and traditional farming methods combine to produce some of the best coffees in Africa.

Uganda Is Ideal For Coffee Growing

Blessed with two annual rainy seasons, it is currently one of the top ten coffee producers in the world, and the second largest in Africa. The steep slopes in the East and West of the country enjoy plenty of rainfall – even during the dry season these areas remain lush and verdant - and the numerous lakes and rivers nourish the soil throughout the year.

While Arabica was introduced at the beginning of the 1900’s, Robusta coffee is indigenous to the country, and has been a part of Ugandan life for centuries. The variety of Wild Robusta Coffee still growing today in Uganda's rain forests are thought to be some of the rarest examples of naturally occurring coffee trees anywhere in the world.

The coffee trees are intercropped with traditional food crops and grown in the shade of banana trees and other shade trees. These trees are host to the many brightly coloured birds that flit from branch to branch and help rid the coffee of insects and parasites. In these self-sustaining conditions, coffee is left to grow naturally, flowering on average twice a year.

Coffee Farming

At harvest time the family gets together and selectively handpicks the ripened cherries from the trees and dries them slowly on specially made papyrus mats under the hot equatorial sun. These small farms are harmonious with the country’s landscape and diverse ecosystem – we don’t see large tracts of agriculture cutting across the land. Many of these farms are on the edge of forest reserves or national parks.

For this nation of farmers the cultivation of coffee has always been a major preoccupation, and one of the few sources of commercial income available to rural families. Coffee growing has always remained the exclusive preserve of the smallholder. There are an estimated 500,000 coffee farms in Uganda of which 95% are small family holdings of less than 1 hectare.

Providing both direct and indirect employment to nearly 5 million people, coffee contributes directly to the reduction of poverty nationwide. Recently, the number of people living below the poverty line in Uganda fell 10 percentage points, which can be partly attributable to the coffee sector and the progressive reforms carried out within it, namely the removal of price controls and deregulation of the marketing system.