CSOs urged govt to shift sensitisation about EUDR to villages

With less than five months left for Uganda to comply with the European Union Regulation on Deforestation-free Products (EUDR) requirements, civil society organisations want the government to take sensitisation drives about the regulations to villages.

The EUDR aims to ensure supply chains remain free from products that cause deforestation or were planted on land that was previously a forest. Failure to comply, Uganda will miss out on the EU market for coffee.

Currently, the EU market accounts for 70% of Uganda's coffee exports. Coffee is Uganda's second-leading export earner after gold in foreign exchange terms.

The EUDR will be implemented retrospectively, and commodities like coffee, cocoa, cattle, palm oil, soy, timber and rubber, as well as derived products (such as beef, furniture, or chocolate) that were planted on deforested land from 2021, will not have access to the EU market.

CSOs say sensitisation at the grassroots will ensure that primary producers like smallholder farmers understand the regulation and prepare accordingly.

The call was made by Jane Nalunga, the executive director of Southern and Eastern Africa Trade Information and Negotiations Institute (SEATINI), during a multi-stakeholder dialogue at Kabira Country Club in Bukoto, Kampala, on Tuesday.

It was held under the theme: Unpacking Uganda’s EUDR Risk Classification and Exploring Options for Compliance.

According to Nalunga, currently most sensitisation drives are centred in Kampala, denying information to those who need it most.

She ​said that while the EU has extended the compliance deadline to December 30, 2025, for large companies and June 30, 2026, for small and micro enterprises, Uganda still faces substantial readiness gaps.

Nalunga said that these include low levels of awareness and technical capacity across the coffee value chain; resistance to farmer registration and geolocation mapping challenges, partly driven by misinformation; weak traceability systems and fragmented data infrastructures, among others.

She said the challenge has further been compounded by Uganda’s history of rapid forest loss, with the forest cover declining from 54% in 1900 to just 12.5% in 2020, which further exacerbates the situation and underscores the urgent need for robust verification systems.

Weighing in, Jemima Mbabazi from Food Rights Alliance, an organisation that advocates for the right to food,  said that through their interaction with farmers in Elgon region, people doing the mapping reportedly don't engage them.