Museveni Launches Giant Coffee Farm

PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni yesterday launched Uganda’s largest coffee plantation project in Madudu sub-country, Mubende district. Joyce Namutebi and Stephen Ilungole report that the planned 2,512 hectare Kaweri Coffee Plantation Limited worth US$7.5m(about sh13b) is owned by the world’s largest green coffee specialist company, The Neumann Coffee Group (NKG), of Germany. The farm will process its own coffee and from the rest of the district to add value and employ some 6,000 skilled and casual workers in the next five years. Group chairman Michael Neumann said they would work with the locals “so that everybody benefits.” He said the project was just one of the many the group was planning for Mubende district. The ground-breaking ceremony was attended by German Ambassador Klaus Holderbaum, investment state minister Sam Kutesa, Uganda Investment Authority chief Maggie Kigozi, district officials and area Members of Parliament. Museveni, who planted the first coffee tree, said this was the first coffee plantation project to be undertaken in the country since 1920. He assured the locals that they would benefit from the investment by getting jobs. He said the investors would teach them to grow coffee in a modern way and that outgrowers would supply coffee to the company. Museveni asked the company to examine possibilities of becoming coffee roasters. “We want to add value to our coffee,” he said adding, “Those who handle our coffee are getting the largest share”. “We would like to earn 85% of the coffee value earned by the roasters. He said there was a lot of coffee ready for roasting. “We are about to launch the big push in coffee. We have high yield variety of coffee,” Museveni said. Uganda, he said, produces 3.5 million bags of coffee annually but the target was 12 million bags. With this target, he said, Uganda could become the second largest producer of coffee after Brazil. He assured investors that there was room for big farmers. He said that the Government has land which it is willing to lease to them. He assured the group that electricity would be provided. Ends