Uganda sets new coffee export target [Business Africa]

It is coffee time in Uganda. After falling short, the East African country has relaunched an ambitious campaign to become the world’s third-largest exporter of coffee by 2025.

After shipping nearly 6 million 60-kilo bags in 2020, Africa’s largest coffee exporter says it can be done.

A new law which orders the registration of farmers and the enforcement of standards, plus the replacement of old trees with new ones are part of the measures to achieve the target.

In the current coffee year, the country expects to export 6.5 million bags out of a total harvest of 8 million.

After seeing millions of its Robusta coffee trees get decimated by a viral disease in the 1990s, Uganda’s scientists began breeding new, disease-resistant varieties.

Coffee is Uganda’s main cash crop and is the second-highest foreign exchange earner for the country.

Brazil is currently the world’s leading exporter of coffee, having shipped 40.2 million bags in 2020. Vietnam ranks second with 26.4 million bags.

Apollo Kamugisha, the acting managing director of Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA), the agency mandated to control the crop joins the program from Kampala to talk more about the campaign.

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