Uganda's robustas and arabicas have been winning acclaim for cup quality.
Better genotypes are helping Uganda's robusta production to soar. Now it's arabica's turn.
Uganda’s coffee sector has been building on its position as Africa’s second-largest producer, raising both output and quality in recent years. A national strategic plan launched in 2021 aims to nearly triple production from the 2019/20 season to 20 million 60 kg bags in 2024/25, thereby lifting annual coffee export earnings from $583 million to $1.5 billion. The $210 million plan seeks to reduce harvest and post-harvest losses by half from 40%; increase total acreage under coffee by 20%; and double yields per tree.
Uganda is a robusta dynamo. Coffea canephora is native to the country, and the species accounts for about 85% of production. The planting of three new high-yield varieties of robusta during the past five years has helped boost output. Yet the five-year strategic plan of the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) also aims to increase the farming of Coffea arabica, which commands higher prices. Arabica could also help strengthen employment and income throughout the nation’s coffee value chain.
One obstacle, however, is perennial outbreaks of coffee crop pests and diseases, including black coffee twig borer and coffee red blister disease. In response, the National Coffee Research Institute (NACORI), with the support of the European Union, is set to release to the market at least five new arabica coffee varieties that resist pests and diseases. The new varietals are expected to help farmers save on spending for agricultural chemicals.
“Uganda has been lagging behind in development of new arabica varieties, and this is going to be a landmark for the farmers and the sector,” said Pascal Musoli, a plant breeder and coffee and cocoa researcher at NACORI.
The new varieties are 200% better in performance than the existing ones, and farmers should expect to harvest 3,700 kg per hectare every year by growing them, Musoli said. Most farmers now achieve annual yields ranging from 500 kg to 1,600 kg per hectare, according to UCDA figures.
The new varieties grow a short bush with a smaller canopy than existing crops, yet they produce slightly bigger beans. They have been developed with cup quality in mind.
EU support
Development of these new arabica varieties began in 2019, when NACORI partnered with the EU-EAC Market Access Program (MARKUP), a regional initiative aimed at improving sales in the European Union by five Eastern Africa countries that are member states of the regional trading bloc, East Africa Community (EAC), including Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi. (Customers in the EU purchase more than 70% of Uganda’s coffee exports.)
With financing from the 1th European Development Fund, NACORI collected and analyzed data on coffee yields while tracking the incidence of coffee pests and diseases. Several candidate varieties were analyzed again before they were validated. Now they are ready for release to coffee growers. Arabica varieties that have been planted in Uganda for many decades include SL 14, SL28, KP423, and KP162 — but SL28 and KP162 have proven to be vulnerable to leaf rust and coffee berry disease.
Growers can access technical assistance from National Coffee Research Institute to gain full benefits of new varieties.
Rollout
Results in the field are what matters. Past experience with introduction of new robusta varietals indicates that yields attained at coffee research stations are not always replicated at farms. The UCDA's strategic plan noted that farms attained yields of just 1.4 tons/ha, well below the 2.5 tons/ha recorded at research plots, where conditions are better controlled.
Speed counts too. Rollout can be delayed by the long time required to propagate cuttings, grafts, and tissue culture. Slow dissemination of new planting material sometimes means that farmers miss out on one year in the crop cycle, postponing the increase in yields.
Funding gaps
Inadequate research funding is, according to UCDA, a major constraint in the development, roll-out, and adoption of improved coffee varieties in Uganda.
NACORI’s coffee research programs are normally funded via an annual budget grant from the National Agricultural Research Organization, an agency of the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries. In addition, NACORI gets 10% of the nation’s coffee cess (export tax) income, or 0.01% of the total coffee export revenue, but this amount varies from year to year. UCDA says the variability of NACORI’s income makes research planning difficult and puts ongoing research projects at continual risk of coming to a halt, even if temporarily.
Inadequate funding has limited coffee research to the development of new varieties. There is also a need for R&D in general agronomy; pest and disease management; and climate smart farming, according to the UCDA.
Value chain role
The stakes are high for Uganda, which has a national vision to reach upper middle-income status by 2032. Coffee has been the nation’s leading earner of foreign exchange for more than 20 years, contributing approximately 20% of the total.
Some 1.8 million households farm coffee, and the sector provides employment for over 5 million families. The strategic plan foresees creating at least 40,000 jobs throughout the coffee value chain if the agenda can be implemented successfully. It calls for modernization of post-harvest handling and storage, as well as improving coffee processing and value addition. Arabica's role in the strategy is to expand coffee cultivation to farms at higher elevations than robusta zones and to take advantage of the higher prices and prestige that accrues to the species.
Uganda has already made progress in planting and exporting more arabica. In 1991/92, the species accounted for just 8% of coffee exports, a figure that had risen to 24% in 2017/18, when total exports were much higher, according to UCDA. In 2023/24 however, figures from the United States Department of Agriculture show that arabica's share had fallen to 14% of production, apparently because robusta output has grown faster since 2019.
Across the board in coffee, Uganda’s track record is good, judging from UCDA figures published in the Strategic Plan. One government-led program distributed some 1 billion superior coffee seedlings between 2016 and 2019. Total output has almost doubled from 4 million bags produced in the 2014/15 financial year. Between 2015 and 2020, the number of companies involved in value addition — exporters, hullers, washing stations, roasters, etc. — rose by 38%.
And Ugandan coffees are winning recognition for quality. They collectively ranked third among 25 countries at the recent Coffees Roasted at Origin Competition 2023 held in Paris. A total of 13 Ugandan roasts took prizes among the 200 coffees competing.
Uganda’s arabica growing districts are characterized by warm temperate environments at altitudes between 1,300 and 2,500 meters above sea level. These districts include the slopes of Mount Elgon in eastern Uganda, Mount Ruwenzori to the west, and Mount Muhabura to the southwest.
