UGANDA – In Uganda, the coffee harvest is expected to reach a historic high of 9 million 60-kilogram bags, or 540,000 tonnes of beans in 2022/2023, Uganda Coffee Development Authority Managing Director (UCDA) Emmanuel Iyamulemye told Bloomberg.
This forecast, if realized, would mark a new peak for the sector and could also see Uganda become the leading producer of coffee ahead of Ethiopia as well as the largest African exporter of the raw material.
According to the official, these positive prospects for the production apparatus are explained by good rainfall and improved yields of the plantations thanks to the efforts undertaken by the authorities.
Indeed, the government has launched over the last decade, investments in the replanting of degraded orchards, the rejuvenation of orchards and the access of producers to agricultural inputs (pesticides and fertilizers) as well as to credit. lyamulemye said the country is on course to boost annual output to 20 million bags by 2030.
Uganda, which predominantly cultivates robusta, is Africa’s largest exporter of coffee followed by Ethiopia. Earnings from the beans are one of the country’s largest sources of foreign exchange.
As a reminder, Uganda earned US$862 million from the sale of the product on the world market during the fiscal year 2021/2022.
Italy is the biggest importer of Ugandan beans, with Germany, Sudan, India, Belgium, Tunisia, Spain and Morocco among the top destinations, according to the authority.
Uganda’s expected stellar performance comes as the leading global coffee producers are seeing bigger-than-expected losses for their coffee crop due to freakish weather.
Arabica farmers in Brazil, the world’s top exporter believe there will be a significant crop failure in the current season compared with the last high-yielding cycle two years ago, according to Margarete Boteon, an agricultural researcher at the University of Sao Paulo.
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