Coffee exporters had a clean sweep of the top positions at the Presidential Exporter Awards 2022, held in Kampala.
UGACOF, emerged top in the Presidential Exporter Awards for the year 2022, while Olam Uganda and Kawacom were 1st & 2nd Runner Up.
UGACOF is Uganda's largest coffee buyer, processor, and exporter with an export turnover of $100m per annum.
While receiving the award, Michael Nuwagaba, the Chief Operations Officer at UGACOF attributed the excellent performance of the coffee sector to the Coffee Roadmap launched by H.E The President, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni in 2017.
The Roadmap set a production target of 20 million bags by 2030. Since its launch, various efforts have been undertaken by different actors to see accelerated production of coffee.
"We have seen growth in our export volumes. Currently, we export over 1.2 million bags of coffee per year. This rise is a result of the efforts of the different actors," Nuwagaba said.
Uganda has seen a steady rise in coffee export volumes which had stagnated at 3.5m bags.
Coffee exports for 12 months (June 2021-May 2022) totaled 6.35 million bags worth US 837.14 million compared to 5.88 million bags worth US$ 540.54 million the previous year (June 2020-May 2021). This represents an increase of 8% and 55% in both quantity and value respectively.
The Uganda Export Promotions Board organizes the awards and is the national focal point for export promotion and development.