The Annual Uganda Coffee Football Tournament

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football_tournament_2015The Annual Uganda Coffee Football Tournament is back!

The tournament will be held on the 26th September, 2015.

Watch this space for more information!

The 3rd Uganda Coffee Day

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The Uganda Coffee Day is an annual convention of coffee stakeholders that marks the beginning coffee year in Uganda to focus and appreciate a selected challenge of the industry and also share in the mitigation strategies of going forward in the coffee year.

Date: 4th October 2012 Venue: Coffee Research Center Kituza, Mukono Theme: Uganda@50, Milstones of the Century and Strategies for the Future. Time: 9:00 am There will be Transport to the Venue at Coffee House from 7am to 7:45am.

UCDA Leads Coffee Stakeholders to Western Uganda In A Coffee Quality Enhancement Campaign

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The coffee season in South Western and Western Uganda has gathered steam and the traders’ activities have increased. At the meeting between UCDA Managing Director and the UCTF members, on 25th May 2011 at Sheraton Hotel in Kampala, several recommendations were made on how the coffee quality could me maintained as the season set in. One of the recommendations was the intensification of monitoring and regulation enforcement especially at processing by UCDA Field Technical and Extension staff.

This Monday 27th June 2011, a team of coffee professional lead by UCDA and comprising of UCTF, UCFA and NUCAFE is travelling to the South Western and Western part of Uganda visiting the districts of Masaka, Rakai, Bushenyi among others; to enforce coffee regulations at the processing level and also provide practical actions on what the coffee growing districts can do to improve/maintain quality standards.
The task team will hold meetings with local authorities on the need to develop and implement coffee bi-laws that puts a stop to harvesting and marketing of un ripe coffee (including buying of flowers or green coffee in the garden), middlemen buying coffee from farmers that is not yet fully dried, drying coffee in trading centers or at factories, drying coffee on bare ground and sun drying FAQ by processors and traders among other quality issues.
The team task will work with local authorities to enforce the registration of coffee buyers at sub-county level as well as stopping buyers from dealing in coffee trade without buyer’s store licenses and processors operating without valid processing license.

The quest for maintenance of good quality is a continuous one with all stakeholders involved. It’s our sincere hope that the taskforce will not only disrupt but will set the stage for sustained and wholesome quality enhancement fight from all stakeholders. As usual The Coffee Talk will give any updates from the activities of the taskforce. Let’s all support them in this noble endeavor.

UEPB Set to finalize the “Uganda Coffee Export Strategy”!

The process of updating the Coffee sector strategy in order to improve its export competitiveness on the global market for the next 5 years was launched on the 1st of February 2011. The process is being spearheaded by the Uganda Export Promotion Board (UEPB) with technical and financial assistance from the International Trade Centre (ITC).

As part of the process, the core team has held several consultative meetings to refine the outcomes of the first and second stakeholders workshop which did highlight issues affecting the coffee sector. A third stakeholder meeting is planned for next week to further the consultation process.

It is against this background that Coffee sector stakeholder will be meeting for three days for a consultative meeting at Hotel Africana from Tuesday 28th to finalise the plan.

For details please contact Mr. Simon Peter Okiring on mobile number 0773101072, 0414230250/230233 or Email pitasimon@yahoo.com for effective planning.

CFC CERTIFICATION PROJECT DEEPENS

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A group of ten Trainers of Trainers (TOT) and four auditors are scheduled to have a number of training sessions this month and next week respectively for the ongoing coffee verification and certification which is a project funded by the Common Fund for Commodities (CFC) who mandated the East African Fine Coffees Association (EAFCA) to over see the implementation of the project in nine member countries.

The training for the TOT’s comes as the next phase of the project kicks in after the Master trainers who had undergone training in Nairobi in June 2011 are ready to teach the TOT’s on the different standards of certification. The training becomes so critical in that the TOT’s chosen are most important personnel to the project because they have the challenging task of teaching the farmers the different certification standards of UTZ, fair-trade, Rainforest alliance, 4C and Organic translated in the various local languages that farmers are more comfortable with .

In the same time line two of the four auditors will undergo a 22 working day , first batch training in Nairobi on the 8th August 2011 which will see them fully fledged auditors under Africert for which they will sit two set of exams set by national and international certification bodies . This opportunity will open doors for the participants as it has been indicated that there is a lack of properly trained auditors on continent.

The project was formed to train farmers towards good agricultural and management practices that would ultimately lead to their coffee being verified and certified with the fact that it is no longer a case of if the future will be determined by certified coffees but rather a case of when.This project being a pilot project will determine the existence and success of future projects that will be implemented as the industry turns its attention to certified coffees.

EAGLE EYE AFRICA LTD TO LAUNCH PRODUCT FOR THE COFFEE INDUSTRY

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A new member of Uganda Coffee Trade Federation, Eagle Eye Africa Ltd is set to launch its new products to the Uganda market but firstly to the coffee sector on the 9th August 2011 at the Golf Course Hotel in Kampala at 9:00Am.

Eagle Eye Africa Ltd’s desire to showcase their products to the coffee industry comes from a researched belief that the coffee sector and agriculture sector will benefit from their new varieties of different products. Eagle Eye Africa Ltd is an African distribution agent for the Canadian based company called BioFert which is a leading provider of organic and organic based fertilizers for the large agricultural and retails markets around the world.

It manufactures non-toxic, biodegradable, eco-friendly and high grade certified organic and organic based nutrients and supplements that lead to superior quality production while maintaining a high cost-benefit ratio for the growers to meet today’s economic challenges. BioFert caters for all segments including certified organic crops, open field crops, greenhouse crops ,fruits and vegetables, turf, landscape, nurseries, etc. BioFert products have already been introduced to the Rwandan market and its time to establish them in Uganda.

It is in this regard that the Executive Director UCTF invites the coffee community especially those that work with coffee farmers and farm organizations especially Organic coffee as well as those growing it to attend as their products will be very helpful to the future of many farmers.

UCDA BOARD MEMBERS HAVE A BRAINSTORMING SESSION

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The challenges affecting the coffee sector are a daily concern to many of those involved in the coffee sector and on 14th July 2011, the board members of the regulatory authority had a brainstorming session to look at these various issues.

The theme of the session was “finding solutions to the challenges of the coffee sub sector”. First discussed was the issue of production and productivity where the discussion point was how effectively the industry can speed up the multiplication of the CWD, how can the industry mainstream provide a distinct framework to monitor and respond outside the generic MAAIF framework which is neither efficient nor effective, is the current extension system adequate for the coffee subsector and most importantly how can the industry double production with the current acreage.

The second issue was Quality where the point of discussion was what can be done in the interim as the industry awaits the National Coffee Policy to mitigate the quality deterioration.

The third issue discussed was Value addition and Promotion to which the point of discussion was operationalization of the wet mills under the SEP project hence the question what can the industry do to ensure that all the plants are functional and what strategies with scenarios can be looked at and implemented?
The fourth and last issue discussed was Finances where the point of discussion was the funding of the priority areas like coffee research, coffee extension, and coffee replanting on a sustainable basis hence the question how can the industry mainstream the strategies for funding for the areas in the planning and operations and stop handling it on an adhoc basis?

Board members and UCDA personnel highlighted how important it was to persistently, consistently and effectively remain in the face of the President of the country in order to get the due attention.

The measures for the way forward were discussed later on in the afternoon which hopefully shall be put into effect as many of these problems need to be solved sooner rather than later.