A photo montage of Tumwebaze, Kasibante and Museveni
Veteran opposition political ideologue Moses Kasibante has urged politicians not to politicize the ongoing debate on the Coffee (Amendment) Bill, 2024 that aims to mainstream the roles and functions of Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) into the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry & Fisheries (MAAIF).
President Yoweri Museveni has downplayed the role of UCDA in Uganda’s coffee success story, which saw the country last year cash in up to $1.4bn from coffee exports.
A group of MPs, emboldened by the Buganda Kingdom leadership, have been pushing back against the President’s desire to scrap UCDA whose significance he says has been exaggerated by those he suspects have been hired to paint a rosy picture to save the authority from being wound up and its mandate transferred to MAAIF.
Museveni says Ugandan farmers’ improved coffee earnings have resulted from the prudent work by the national research institutions as has been harnessed by the great work his brother Gen Salim Saleh has been doing through Operation Wealth Creation (OWC). Not used to being contradicted and vigorously opposed like we have seen UCDA-instigated MPs do, Gen Museveni has even threatened to unleash the criminal investigations agencies of the State to inquire into how UCDA has been expending the 2% revenues or NTRs annually collected from Uganda’s coffee export earnings.
In his interviews with Kampala YouTuber Kwezi Robinson, whose clips have since gone viral on social media, Kasibante eloquently amplifies similar messaging while making it clear that UCDA isn’t indispensable in the Ugandan coffee story as MPs have been claiming. He accuses MPs of being ignorant populists who are just out to play to the gallery and unnecessarily excite their voters in preparation for 2026 reelection. To him, many of them actually don’t even want tensions to deescalate because they see this public quarreling over the UCDA/coffee bill as a good campaign issue to run on, while demonizing the Speaker Among and President Museveni.
Kasibante makes the case even more clearer than the President of Uganda while demanding to know the ways in which UCDA has been visible anywhere in the life and struggles of ordinary coffee farmers in Buganda. He has also challenged the Baganda MPs to explain how the scrapping of UCDA would diminish ordinary Baganda’s ability to earn from their coffee. Kasibante, the former Rubaga North MP, who some fear might be on his way to joining Gen Museveni in the NRM in a deal potentially brokered by Speaker Among, asserts that as a large scale coffee farmer, he knows that the research on coffee has been done by NACORI, NARO and other GoU research institutions who merely share their findings with UCDA while recommending the appropriate interventions.
Himself a coffee farmer, Kasibante asserts that there is nothing mischievous Government can ever wish to do to disadvantage coffee farmers in Buganda and be blocked through mere retention of UCDA as the MPs seem to imply. He makes it clear that the same Museveni enacted UCDA into existence and can’t be accused of working to maliciously shut it down. He makes reference to several other government service delivery projects which are doing well when they are under a Ministry and have never been an agency like UCDA had been for the last more than 20 years of its existence.
He illustrates his point with the passport issuing office under the Internal Affairs Ministry and the driving licenses or permits’ issuing office under the Works & Transport Ministry. He says that these two are the most efficient service delivery points under Gen Museveni’s government (to the extent that you might even think they aren’t part of the same GoU) yet they are supervised by a commissioner at their respective Ministries. He says what is critical is for the President to be prevailed over to allow people to work without political interference besides ensuring adequate funding for such service delivery units regardless of the Ministry where they are situated.
That he has been using funerals to conduct opinion polls on how many people are aware of or know about UCDA only to establish that none of the coffee farmers even know about its existence yet MPs are deceptively claiming that without it, the coffee earnings will plummet and the entire sub sector will collapse.
Kasibante says the reason why UCDA is invisible and unknown among community members is because it’s inadequately funded and can’t have enough officers in all districts. He says this is what MPs should be clamoring for if they are indeed well-intentioned. He also claims that many of them are just playing to the gallery without even knowing what is at stake in the ongoing UCDA/coffee bill debate. He demands to know why milk/dairy products’ producers aren’t as worried or alarmed that mere scrapping of Diary Development Authority will bring their subsector to a halt.
TUMWEBAZE SPEAKS OUT
With his junior Bright Rwamirama taking center stage, Agriculture Minister Frank Tumwebaze has largely been inconspicuous since the coffee debate started. But on Wednesday, he came out with a long missive contradicting what the anti-coffee bill agitators have been saying thus far. He makes very interesting submissions which we reproduce hereunder:
VEREBATIM: First of all, I think many have chosen to play politics and aren’t willing to understand the merits of why government wants a streamlined and rationalized structure of delivering services. I don’t think that they are debating the development of coffee anymore. It’s only politics that I see. The exercise of rationalization is not about UCDA alone. It’s a re-organization of the entire government structure of service delivery. Rationalization seeks to eliminate the scattering of scarce resources across many government institutions doing the same work. It seeks to consolidate resources and efforts. Is that a bad policy? Certainly not. I see other voices saying that why not reduce on the other arms of government. That’s not a problem. May be this Rationalization of agencies debate could give us a starting point on the need for an entire public sector reform (Parliament size, cabinet, districts etc).
UCDA Vs MAAIF
How can someone say that I don’t trust the intentions of government but yet again trust UCDA? UCDA is part of government and was created by government. I think Ugandans forget so easily. The very same voices now bidding for UCDA were the same that harshly condemned UCDA last year that it had withdrawn membership from the international Coffee Organization (ICO) and that because of that withdrawal, Ugandan coffee was going to suffer and loose market.
I haven’t seen Ugandan coffee lose market. To the contrary, the prices have been increasing exponentially. They condemned UCDA, condemned me as minister and called us all sorts of names as clueless people messing up the coffee sector. The same voices that condemned UCDA for withdrawing from ICO are the same now claiming that UCDA is internationally accredited. That is why I choose to sometimes keep quiet on some of these people especially when the debate is deliberately driven to take on unnecessary polarizing sentiments.
My appeal to them is that coffee is for all of us. Whoever has a garden of coffee; small or big (like I do personally) is an equal stakeholder. Its therefore arrogance to believe and assert that coffee is for a few or a certain region. This is wrong and it doesn’t help the future of our country. Then there is talk that the Ministry of Agriculture can’t handle the work of UCDA. That the ministry has no capacity. This is another falsehood. What is that work of UCDA that is so complex? The staff in UCDA are agronomists that offer agricultural extension work just like those of the ministry.
Most, if not all, those staff in UCDA came from the Ministry and moved to UCDA because of better pay that agencies had over Ministries. The current MD of UCDA, for example, Dr. Emmanuel Iyamulemye, came from MAAIF. So there is nothing technical that UCDA staff are doing that Ministry of Agriculture staff can’t do. The difference has only been in staff remuneration. UCDA has been licensing actors in the value chain and regulating for export standards. Is that too complex work not to be done in the Ministry?
The same desk will be put in/returned to MAAIF to do the same, just like it will be for dairy and dairy products. So there is nothing that UCDA has been doing that will be lost. MAAIF, like any other Ministry, is structured according to the public service governance frame work. It has three divisions of crop, livestock & fisheries with all enabling departments. The departments can be expanded as scope of work expands. The Ministry has been here since the colonial days. All staff in UCDA and other agencies came from it (MAAIF). Agencies like UCDA & NAADS have only been more funded than MAAIF and this has been a cross-cutting problem in the whole government. A problem that now the government wants to fix with Rationalization.
There aren’t systems, therefore lacking in MAAIF. All the Ministry needs is more staffing and funding. Be it UCDA or MAAIF, the real production of coffee is done on farm by private people; the farmers. The major role of government is to avail the farmers with quality disease-free and resistant coffee seedlings. The other role is regulation of the whole value chain to ensure adherence to the correct agronomical practices.
The disease free seedlings that have helped Uganda to develop its coffee crop have for years been developed by NACORI-Mukono (the National Coffee Research Institute) which is under NARO not UCDA. As the Minister of Agriculture, I have been appealing to all authorities (Ministry of Finance & Parliament etc) to increase funding for agricultural research but we never get that much needed support. How I wish all those voices well mobilized and charged for UCDA can join me to advocate for more funding to NACORI/NARO which is the breeding house for all the coffee we are proud of.
Currently, coffee seedlings are scarce. In most coffee nursery beds, a seedling of coffee is now about to hit Shs3000. The demand is so high. That means NACORI must be funded more to produce more and more disease-free coffee foundation seed for the nursery operators to multiply. There is no future of coffee if the development of the current high quality disease-free foundation seed being produced by NACORI isn’t prioritized and funded. I ask all those doing coffee activism to know this.
All a coffee farmer wants/needs is correct seed and correct advisory on handling the commodity across the value chain and markets. This can be done by UCDA or any other government department that is designated and supported. We don’t have to spend sleepless nights debating this. If UCDA hadn’t been supported by the government, what would it have done?
Has MAAIF been doing nothing? Certainly not. Despite it being a chronically under-funded Ministry, it has been fighting all diseases in the country and pests (FMD, coffee wilt, banana wilt etc) successfully. So, if we want the future of coffee guaranteed, let’s fund NARO/NACORI more in order to continue producing more affordable disease-free coffee varieties. The rest will be done by the farmers & other value chain actors. Any other agency or department can be tasked and supported to do quality control & the enabling regulation. Frank Tumwebaze, Minister of Agriculture, Animal Industry & Fisheries.
