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Uganda Coffee Prices Problem
Uganda has embarked on a vigorous coffee replanting programme to cash in on rising world prices. "Coffee prices on the world market recently hit an eight-year high at $1.65 per kilogramme; this movement is expected to be sustained," Fred Luzinda Mukasa, acting managing director of the state-run Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA), told The EastAfrican.
"UCDA in conjunction with the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries has drawn up an eight-year coffee production plan (2007-2015) designed to increase production from the current four million to five million bags of 60 kilogrammes each," the official said.
He said the Authority had held a coffee stakeholders workshop in Kampala last week that discussed ways and means of revamping the coffee industry.
Trading sources said that global coffee production during 2007/2008 is estimated to range between 109 million and 112 million bags. This compares with a total world demand of around 120 million bags, leaving a deficit of about eight million bags.
Mr Mukasa, who is also the UCDA Board Secretary, said the new coffee replanting programme will cost about Ush2 billion ($1.2 million) per year.
"We have committed about Ush1 billion ($541,000) to this programme and we are lobbying the government to provide the remaining money," he said.
A senior UCDA official, David Kiwanuka, said Uganda has embarked on a replanting programme to replace millions of coffee trees that have become too old to be productive. The programme is also aimed at replacing trees destroyed by the wilt disease. The disease has infected about 52 per cent of Uganda's coffee trees.
The wilt disease does not have a cure. Farmers have been advised to control its proliferation through the destruction of the affected trees by burning them.
The disease, suspected to have come from the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), has destroyed almost the entire coffee acreage in some districts like Bundibugyo.
Between 800,000 and one million households in central, southwestern and eastern Uganda depend on incomes from coffee sales.
During the 1960s and 1970s, coffee and cotton contributed almost equally to the country's 80 per cent export earnings.
Through the civil war and political turmoil of Idi Amin's regime (1971-79), coffee alone contributed about 96 per cent of Uganda's foreign exchange earnings.
Due to the government's concerted efforts to diversify the economy, coffee now contributes less than 40 per cent of the country's foreign exchange earnings.
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