Sweden Helps To Lift Organic Sales To $4m

Mar 04, 2004

A Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA)-funded project for increasing exports of organic products from Africa (Epopa), has started a countrywide campaign to attract more farmers to the business.

By Eddie Ssejjoba
in Masaka


A Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA)-funded project for increasing exports of organic products from Africa (Epopa), has started a countrywide campaign to attract more farmers to the business. Exports are now about $4m.
Organic foods (which are grown without any artificial additives like fertilisers), fetch premium prices in the European Union and parts of the United States.
The Epopa country director, Alastair Taylor said recently, they link up with exporters to reach out to the farmers and now export at least $4m worth of organic products from Uganda each year. But Epopa wants to increase export volumes.
Bo Van Elzakker, the German-based Epopa programme director who was also recently in Uganda with a group from the German embassy and SIDA toured several fruit farms in Masaka.
“Our primary goal is to ensure good quality through better farming methods of the organic products that fetch better prices in the European markets. This will help make farming more sustainable,” he said.
Epopa is interested in pineapples, either fresh or dried, passion fruits, apple bananas (ndiizi), vanilla and coffee. It has recruited about 21,240 local farmers and has branches in Tanzania.
Elzakker said Uganda is now considered the leading African country in terms of sourcing, taking over from Tanzania and South Africa.
“There is a big shortage of Ugandan organic products in the European markets and many donor organizations have shown interest in assisting farmers and exporters to double the trade,” Elzakker said.
“Organic products are for serious exporters and needs a lot of organization and investment which is not a priority to traders who need quick money, that is why we are moving down to the real growers", he said.
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