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Uganda: The irony is that UCDA crime is revamping the cafe

Pabio October 30, 2024

Mahmood Mamdani – in a parallel commentary in Scholars in the Marketplace – tells us that when the IMF and World Bank pushed their debilitating privatization drive across Africa – which ruined many still agrarian economies – in Uganda in particular, they found servile and willing allies.

Former NRA/M rebels, recently arrived from the bush, see privatization as an opportunity to enrich themselves. (They actually own many, many things, including estates and farms previously owned by Ugandans). These former rebels also understood that privatization would allow them to exercise immense political control over a poor mass.

Indeed, Mamdani continues, even when the WB and IMF retracted some of their dangerous proclamations, Museveni and co. simply doubled. It was as part of the structural adjustment and privatization drive of the 1990s that the Uganda Coffee Marketing Board (CMB) was liquidated.

Opinions among researchers are divided on whether the CMB was still viable. But we can conclude that this conspiracy of the IMF, the WB and the NRA dangerously engaged in the liberalization of the markets was unstoppable. They were prepared to liberalize the coffee trade regardless of the operational circumstances of the CMB.

With the fall of the CMB, cooperatives and producer unions also fell. Again, it is fair to say that no positive liability could prevent an agency from being liberalized or liquidated.

However, even though the IMF-WB-NRA/M “liberated” the coffee trade from government control, they still needed government unity to ensure bean quality and increased productivity. This is where the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) was born. This would do the same things as CMB, but without the trading feature – without trading money.

UCDA AND MWANYI TERIMBA

To its credit, the UCDA worked for a long time to motivate coffee farmers whose enthusiasm had waned. Remember that at this time the government was toying with several other “non-traditional business cultures”. They too had given up coffee. But building on the expertise and pedigree of the CMB – almost all former CMB workers continued to work as UCDA workers in almost the same positions – they changed the game.

It took a long time and a lot has changed. Buganda Katikkiro, Owek. Charles Peter Mayiga, with his Mwanyi Terimba campaign, took this issue to another level. By working alongside UCDA, farmers in and around Buganda were motivated to rehabilitate old fields. More peasants and small-scale farmers have joined the movement.

Volumes have increased steadily, as has quality. Indeed, while a huge percentage of market share goes to foreigners who dominate the sale of our coffee to the tune of 75%, local farmers have seen small amounts of money enter their pockets.

It is worth pointing out that the money paid to Ugandan farmers is comparatively very small. While Uganda records $1.35 billion in coffee revenue in a year, foreign traders who control 75% of the industry, although registered in Uganda, are headquartered in Bonn, London, Singapore and elsewhere. So much of this money stays outside Uganda.

The “added value” fallacy

Unfortunately, the response by Yoweri Museveni and his supporters to small amounts of money coming into Uganda has reduced the problem to “value addition”.

But as the Kenyan economist David Ndi said, “added value is a cockroach idea”, that is to say a bad idea that keeps coming back, even if we want to kill it. Because the best coffee is the one that is ground at the time of consumption. Indeed, the best value added is to ensure that the quality of beans produced by farmers is of exceptional quality – and that farmers get value for their super beans.

This is what UCDA/Charles Peter Mayiga have been focusing on and need more support. I still have difficulty understanding why a farmer who spends years growing coffee (planting, watering, covering, weeding, processing, picking, drying, etc.) creates less value than a middleman or the brewers/ cafes that only spend a few hours there.

I’ve heard arguments that coffee is expensive in a cafe, because a cafe “sells culture” (decor, ambiance, etc.) therefore more value. But why shouldn’t a farmer be asked to earn income from his product in proportion to the platform it is sold on, as is the case with all other products? Would a café sell culture without coffee?

But these are just cockroach arguments: many other coffee-selling countries profit from their coffee by trading enough on their beans, because making the coffee available is the initial value created. In this context, value addition would mean producing world-class beans, regardless of their type, and marketing them as such. It’s the UCDA.

THE PAINS OF TRANSACTIONAL POLITICS

The point of contention is Museveni’s commitment to transactional politics. This does not allow him to see autonomous masses. Even at 80 years old – we are told – this man sees himself governing until the age of 100 and believes that only the poor can be governed. Fortunately,

or unfortunately, coffee seems to thrive without his control.

He’s been trying to get his hands on it for 15 years. Enter Odrek Rwabwogo, Nelson Tugume and others: these men perfectly understood Museveni’s dilemma and offered to help him. It should be obvious that in seeking to dismantle the UCDA (whatever the terminologies), the gamble is to quietly and tactfully create space for these men to take over the industry.

They will individually benefit, but ultimately they will pass control to Yoweri Museveni. No wonder these are the men who constantly chant “added value”, “added value”.