Tony at The source of River Nile uganda
Tony had never been to Africa, his parents are from Ravello on the Amalfi cost in Italy but he grew up in London
Amalfi Coast Italy
Nigel and I love that part of Italy and have had a few holidays there but had never met anyone from there
7.5 hours later on a BA filgt and were in Uganda . the best part of this is the landing over lake victoria one the largest in land lakes.
We were met by Ethnic Supplies Staff and having sorted out the itinerary we headed East to a town called Mbale. On the we stopped off at the source of the River Nile
Source of the river Nile Uganda
This is the home of Bugisu Arabica coffee; where we visited the Bugisu Cooperative Union.
This is what is called a Secondary cooperative because it buys coffee from primary societies as well as farmers, it has processing, grading and roasting facilities.
The facilities have great capacity but have fallen on bad times, meaning that the equipment is old, the facility is not as clean as it should be, part of the facility has been closed, reducing capacity. Poor business and investment decisions were made leading to near bankruptcy until the government bailed them out.
The director was understandably nervous about our intentions. He would however welcome some form of partnership working. He hopes that the Union can return to its former glory and be in a position to export a fully processed product from here. I hope so too for his sake!
We also visited the Mbale Importers and exporters- Under the leadership of Stephen M Wekomba they describe themselves as coffee exporters and processors. There was not much to learn from this group and on the day we arrived we observed women sorting coffee beans by hand
women sorting coffee beans
Hassan (our guide) Stephen and Tony
children at Mmbale exporters
After this stop we headed further east to a village called Sipi and spent the night at Sipi River Lodge
a home from home.
This place is located on the foot hills of Mt elgon and the weather is changeable from hour to hour. When we arrived it was sunny half an hour alter, it rained so heavily we couldn't believe it!
sipi river falls, view from my bedroom window
cottage at Sipi River Lodge
4 comments:
just saw a tweet about this story. These coffee suppliers are in areas that are not attracting much international attention since they have not traditionally produced very high quality coffee. This is unfortunate. basic training on handling and a bit of investment for bags, tarps, store repair, etc would be a great first step. But there's also the growing practices, transport and more to look at. Everything is interconnected, and 1 simple misstep (e.g. lack of transport one week) can ruin the whole harvest. there are some videos on our Crop to Cup website that show some of the simple training programs and initiatives that are possible when Ugandan farmers are well organized and partners are in place.
Obviously the certs are doing something wrong if this is how their coffee is turning out. Re: the organic certification issue - this is really why that whole process is so problematic. Even when farmers are already naturally/traditionally growing organically, they need to jump through a thousand hoops just to get the forms and audit process down correctly to have themselves certified. Often an outside consultant is the only way to navigate the process, then additional costs are dropped on the farmers to have the certification audit (and re-audits) carried out. There is surely a way to simply use transparency and communication between consumer and producer instead of this costly process.
Hi Taylor and welcome to the discussion. As far we could tell the quality of the coffee suffers precisely because of the issues that you point out some of which are minor and can be fixed easily.
An interesting debate is taking palce on my other blog and here is the link
http://ethnicsupplies.wordpress.com/2009/02/24/how-much-do-folk-in-the-western-world-know-about-fairtrade/
Hi everyone,
I think it is time for me to comment again. Since I last commented I have visited Ankole Coffee Producer's Co-operative Union Ltd, and the factory in Mitooma where the terrible storage comditions were reported. It turns out that the rotten corrugated tin building in the photos is right next door to a very nice coffee factory and store made from blockwork rendered with cement, where coffee is kept and processed in perfectly good conditions. Interesting that Ida only published photos of the tumbledown shed, but not of the nice new factory adjoining it! I wonder why? The General Manager of ACPCU has stated already, quoted by me on the other blog, that the run-down shed is only used for storing almost worthless coffee husks, and that no-one in their right mind could store coffee in such a building, it would be immediately stolen. Any comment, Ida?
Hi Andy
Welcome to this discussion too.
As stated on my other blog http://ethnicsupplies.wordpress.com/2009/02/24/how-much-do-folk-in-the-western-world-know-about-fairtrade/#comment-142 I wrote about what I saw on the day of my visit.
I posted a link of the rest of the photographs in my blog at Wordpress as well as Twitter which is where most of the commentators on my blog came from.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/31043307@N02/
Here is another blog about that visit.
http://ethnicsupplies.wordpress.com/2009/05/21/an-english-cow-in-africa/
If you are implying that I have something to hide or I am exaggerating my findings, you couldn't be more wrong if you tried. If you think about it this my blog and I could select which comments to show or not!
In addition I am on record repeating the same comments infront of some of the highly respected figures in the industry such as Baroness Chalker, here is the link for your information, please listen to the Audio bit where it says General comments
http://businessfightspoverty.ning.com/page/2009-event-series-audio
Following that meeting Baroness Chalker invited me to a gathering at her office in Pimilco on 1/07/2009, where this conversation continued. Here are the details that event http://www.africamatters.com/events.asp?page_id=205&page=1&e_id=41
I don't think that she and others of that calibre would give me an audience if they felt I was a liar or prone to exaggeration.
In addition Tony and I presetned our findings to the Uganda Investment Authority as well as Uganda coffee development Agency and I have a audio recording of that meeting if you want to hear it.
They continue to speak to us, in fact I spoke to their MD on 29/6/09, this would not happen if they felt we had ill feelings towards the industry.
I have also invited you to speak to our guide and driver during our stay in Uganda, who will verify what is contained in those pictures and that still stands. You are aslo welcome to speak with Tony.
Yes the factory made of concrete and block work does exist as shown in my pucs, but the hygiene is poor, we found husks and beans in the same facility, the floor was not swept unlike teh tin shed where two women were resting and as stated before that tin shed was very clean despite its exterior.
Tony took more photos as this place than I did as i was operating the video camera, sadly we lost that recording but I will ask Tony for his copies of the photographs and post them here too.
Once again, I have nothing against Cafedirect and I am merely reporting what I saw on teh day I visited. If things have since improved then that is great news.
For the record I have no reason to be dishonest in my writing as you well know that Uganda is just 8 hours away by plane and anyone can go and check and someone I met on an network called Ecademy did just that in 2007 and I covered her expenses whilst she was on the ground. You would be welcome to speak to her too.
As stated on my blog, I am happy to help resolve some of the problems that Tony and I witnessed during our visit and the Ugandan coffee development agency have taken up that offer
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