Uganda has overtaken Vietnam as the world’s second-largest coffee supplier to Italy.

Italy is the second-largest importer of green coffee beans in Europe, after Germany.

Uganda is now behind Brazil, which was hit by a bad drought this year, followed by frost. The weather seriously harmed Brazil’s coffee trees.

Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) says this year, the country’s coffee exports have increased to their highest level in three decades.

“Uganda coffee is now highly sought after globally because of its quality and unique attributes,” UCDA, which is working towards attaining the production target of 20 million bags of coffee by 2025, revealed on Twitter.

Total shipments jumped 21% to 6.5 million 60-kilogram bags in the year through September and about a third of that went to Italy.

Coffee is one of the world's most popular drinks, and it is produced in more than 50 countries, but Uganda is Africa’s biggest coffee exporter and the continent’s second-largest producer of the beans after Ethiopia.