KAMPALA – Since Thursday night, I have been asked repeatedly whether The Coffee Struggle is over. The simple answer is NO! If you are not given to lengthy reading, I suggest you stop here. But if you want to understand why, then read on for context.
By 1931, coffee had established itself as the pre-eminent export for Uganda. It was part of a broader process of dismantling the local economy & building a colonial economy.
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One in which we produced what we don’t consume & were taught to consume what we don’t produce. The problem is that Ugandans were restricted to growing coffee either as landlords or laborers. The processing & trading was reserved for those of European & Indian extraction. In the 1940s the Ugandans decided this situation had to be addressed.
This in part explains the Bataka Riots of that period in Buganda. The more progressive response was the formation of cooperatives pioneered by the Bugisu Cooperative Union & replicated across other coffee-growing areas. This was so successful that it led to the formation of the first indigenous bank, later known as Uganda Commercial Bank.
This cooperative movement is what laid the foundation for the political process that led to the departure of the colonial administration. The success of this initiative became a problem for the coffee sector in the first independent government.
The cooperatives were co-opted by the ruling party to serve the political purpose of mobilization. Aware of the potency of this force, the UPC administration went one step further to nationalize the cooperatives & monopolize the processing & selling of coffee. It this became a government function presided over by political appointees & bureaucrats, an arrangement that would last till 1991.
This facilitated the theft of money from coffee exports in the name of finding “national priorities” & meeting administrative costs. Farmers went unpaid for years and eventually, the cooperatives collapsed. Farmers responded to this in two major ways. The negative one was either to uproot or neglect the trees.
The more innovative ones found alternative markets. This is what was misrepresented as smuggling. In the early 90s, a new form of coffee wilt disease decimated farms across most of the country. This brought the sector to its knees. The government unable to respond meaningfully to this & the twin problem of low prices for & nonpayment of farmers, simply bailed out & left coffee people on their own.
This would later become a blessing in disguise. During the same period, Brazil suffered a major frost, and prices of coffee went up. Demand for Ugandan coffee increased. This attracted private players to invest in the sector. For the first time, farmers were paid directly & immediately. It was a game-changer.
Today farmers are paid instantly 2/3 of the world market price for green beans. It is this process that has grown the national income to the $800m we earn today. The latest phase of the struggle has been about what some of us in the sector see as policy missteps that will leave us holding empty jute bags. These missteps started with bad legislation, the exit of the International Coffee Organization’s attempts to create a monopoly for a private company & now the ill-advised funding of a bunch of fraudsters & conmen to supposedly drive the value addition agenda.
This is part of an ongoing struggle to deliver benefits to the primary producer of the coffee bean. It is a struggle that would best be served by all of us acting together in the national interest. It will not be achieved by the unquestioning acceptance of one person’s view of what this benefit should be. At the very minimum, there should be a robust & informed debate.
The kind that helped us avert economic catastrophe from the adventurous policy misdirection of the early days of the current government. Coffee is a national treasure & should be treated as such.
Those who argue that this is a fallout from a failed sharing of the loot can be forgiven for thinking they are intelligent.
Their only contribution is to infuse vulgarity in an otherwise adult discussion of a matter of national importance. The main purpose of our exposé is to show that a coffee value addition strategy cannot be achieved by relying on fraudsters.
It is at best a value attrition strategy. In the process, this has contributed to the public frustration about corruption in high public office.
There are many Ugandans (and I don’t make the grade) with immense knowledge & vast experience of the coffee trade & business acumen who can improve the coffee value chain. Plus they are competent & honest enough to do public service for the farmer.
They have simply been ignored. Instead, we have wound up with scammers picking the taxpayer’s pocket. An important upside of this debate is that it creates a clearer understanding of the coffee sector in the minds of the Ugandan public.
Those who understand the politics of mobilization cannot downplay the centrality of social consciousness. It is now well understood that those of us who have invested in the coffee sector for a return cannot possibly act against our self-interest.
It is because we see clearly that the so-called value addition strategy is dead in the water. It is heading the same way as earlier interventions in bananas, sugar, phosphates, cotton, leather, and so on. Fill free to add to the list.
So whatever we are doing, we see as following in the footsteps of our coffee-growing grandparents who stood for their interests against even more daunting odds than we have today. We know we shall prevail.
