Coffee: What Did Vietnam, Ethiopia Do Uganda Couldn’t?

Uganda is determined to annually put up five million bags (60kgs) of coffee on world market. In February this year, the prime bean exports rose by 46% to 397,883 bags—up from 271,941 in the same month last year. Robusta shipments were 47% at 301,756 bags from 204,921, and arabica rose 43% to 96,127 bags. By this rate, potentially at 4.8m bags Uganda has replaced Mexico (3.7m bags) in 8^th position of the rankings by the International Coffee Organization (ICO).

Is Kampala Rising from Slumber or What Had Gone Wrong?

Just in 1980, a time of peak political turmoil, Vietnam trailed Uganda in coffee production. In that year, Uganda produced approximately 2.1 million bags against 77,000 for Vietnam.

Over the last three decades, the scales incredibly swapped—with Vietnam today being the second-largest coffee producer after Brazil, offering 27.5 million bags in the 2015/2016 planting season. This is nearly six-fold Uganda’s 4.8 million bags. Coffee has, arguably become Vietnam’s second-largest source of export revenue.

What Did Vietnam Do That Defied Uganda?
Coffee has never lost its global clout but Uganda lost hers.

Across the world, by January 2017, coffee exports amounted to 9.84 metric tons.

As one of the most extensively traded commodity; only second to oil, coffee is exclusively produced in developing and emerging markets. But nearly all the 3.5 billion cups consumed daily, are in developed systems. Through decaffeination, coffee also provides caffeine for coco, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics.

It is, therefore, imperative to trace how individual coffee producing nations respond to these global market trends.

With and Without Strategic Aims
Like Uganda, Vietnam introduced sweeping reforms in the 1990s—that followed similar trajectories – from heavy regulation to moderate deregulation today.

Unlike Uganda, though, Vietnam identified coffee as a strategic resource upon which to bet the nation’s future. Hence set strategic aims: to annually increase production by 20 to 30%; to primarily focus on the less expensive Robusta beans—that offer twice the caffeine as arabica beans.

By 2010 Vietnam had 549,100 hectares under coffee production—three times more than Uganda’s 182,875 hectares.

Because Vietnam prioritizes agriculture; production is far more capital and input intensive than Uganda’s—resulting in higher yields per hectare. In the 2005/2006 planting season, it had 257 tractors per square kilometer of arable land. Uganda had nine. It was also using 300 times more fertilizer than Uganda, per hectare of arable land.

Oh, Coffee Wilt, Oh Dry Whether!
These are the official excuses in Kampala; year in, year out. It evokes embarrassment for a country with international acclaim against HIV/Aids in people to concede defeat of an insect in a major forex earner crop!

But the question is, why not a similar outcry in Ethiopia? Ethiopia is ranked number five best producer by ICO—just behind India, Colombia, Vietnam and Brazil.

With over 1, 100-year experience, Ethiopia is the geographical cradleland of Arabica coffee—the most popular bean worldwide with 28% of her exports a result of it.

To circumvent natural calamities, Ethiopia developed zonal variants of arabica bean, each with its characteristics, name and taste: Harar, Limu, Sidamo and Yirgacheffu beans. They were all trademarked with rights owned and protected by the government.

Hence Fertilizer and machinery have a significant impact on yields.

But strategic thinking is such that, we must have enrolled agronomists in Ethiopian universities to learn best practices against natural crop catastrophes.

Swaib K Nsereko
Lecturer, Department of Mass Communication,
Islamic University in Uganda