AMAZIMA ASSOCIATION
Swiss partner organization of the KIGEZI ORPHANS PROJECT
NEWSLETTER JANUARY 2025
To all who are well disposed towards us and our heart project
Dear friends of the AMAZIMA association
The primary intention of this newsletter was to finally inform you in more detail about the medium and long-term project goals of the Kigezi Orphans Project. About the long path we intend to take - from stabilizing school operations to a viable infrastructure for the school to the final step, the establishment of a long-term, self-sustaining, economically stable Kigezi community in the school's extensive catchment area.
Robusta coffee from the highlands of Uganda is a high-quality product with great demand. Demand is currently much greater than current production can cover. Nevertheless, far too little of the potential added value remains for the country of origin and the producing farmers. The third party that wins is primarily China. Despite the increasing demand, coffee farmers in Uganda are not earning a cent more than they have before.
If we can one day get European and Swiss importers to be prepared to trade fairly, which gives the local population what it deserves, then we will have achieved our main goal. Uganda must fundamentally determine the path to this and manage it itself. But we can make a valuable contribution with our support at the grassroots level.
Read more about this in the NTV article, which we have prepared for you below.
And then, unfortunately, the big BUT - which unfortunately leads to a slight alienation of the original intention behind the newsletter...
Source: ntv.de
Extreme weather is destroying large parts of the coffee harvest in South America and Asia. European customers are looking for new suppliers in Uganda, but a new competitor was faster: China is discovering coffee for itself and is delighting Ugandan manufacturers.
There is a gold rush atmosphere in Uganda. Coffee farmers in the East African country cannot currently harvest the rich red coffee cherries fast enough. The birthplace of Robusta coffee is suddenly an internationally important coffee producer because extreme weather conditions are destroying the harvest in Brazil and Vietnam, Europe's main suppliers. International coffee prices are rising to record highs. Small farmers in Uganda, on the other hand, have never earned more for a sack of beans. "Off to Uganda," you would think, is the motto of European buyers. But they are too late: the Chinese were faster and also thieves. They have discovered Ugandan coffee plantations as a new source of income.
Ronald Bule is a strong, influential man in the Wakiso district not far from Lake Victoria. His grandfather grew Robusta coffee here, not far from the equator. "He always wore a tie in the fields. Everyone here talked about it," Ronald tells us, laughing. He has taken off his tie, but Ronald Bule still keeps up the family tradition: when working on his plantation in Bulwanyi-Maya, he is always neatly dressed. A collared shirt is the minimum, everyone knows that. And of course, Ronald Bule now owns most of the coffee bushes in the cooperative, which has 13,500 small farmers as members.
"Coffee is my life. I have been growing coffee since I was a child and I also export to Germany. But I have never seen prices like these," says Ronald Bule about the latest developments on the world market. The value of a sack of Ugandan Robusta coffee has more than doubled in the past few months. "I am sure the price will continue to rise."
Worldwide crop failures
Like other African coffee producers, Uganda is also benefiting from crop failures by its previous European suppliers in Asia and South America. Less coffee means higher prices. Alternative markets with great growth potential such as Uganda are important in order to keep prices low for German consumers. "Everyone is coming to us at the moment," says Ronald Bule. More and more Europeans too. But they are not the deciding factor.
Ronald Bule is standing in the noisy coffee filling area of his CECOFA cooperative, where he is a board member. There is a lot going on. New sacks of fresh, sun-dried coffee beans are constantly arriving on rickety delivery trucks. They are unloaded and processed manually. "There, they're ready," says Bule. "EXPORT" is written in large letters on the sacks. "Please, this is our best customer."
"The Europeans have to be careful"
Ronald Bule bows to a man with a yellow helmet and white coat. He crushes coffee beans between his fingers to test them. Smells them. "Good, good."
Subi Bayliyung nods enthusiastically. He is a buyer for Equador Peak Coffee, a Chinese coffee house in Yiwu in Zhejiang Province. Organic. High quality.
"The Europeans are still interested in our goods, but they have to be careful," warns Ronald Bule. "The Chinese are new customers on the coffee market, they are coming to us in person, especially now. They stay on site and they pay us in advance. The Europeans refuse to do that."
China buys the entire harvest
Buyers like Subi Bayliyung had the foresight to switch to Ugandan Robusta coffee six months ago and thus secured lower prices. Now they are picking up their harvest.
"More and more Chinese people are drinking coffee. But our local production is too small. So we are increasingly buying more coffee in alternative markets like Uganda," says Subi Bayliyung. He types his answers into a translation app on his cell phone. He sends the results to Ronald Bule via WhatsApp. The two communicate wordlessly for hours, even making jokes and laughing.
The Chinese man has bought up the coffee cooperative's entire harvest. While the price of coffee is rising in German shops and buyers are looking for alternative markets, China has long since signed contracts and is transporting sacks of valuable coffee away. To the detriment of German consumers.
So far, only a side job
"We encourage our farmers to grow more coffee. There is a lot of potential for growth," says Paul Sepuuya, product manager of the CECOFA cooperative. "Our members own an average of just 0.4 hectares. That's not a lot, but there are a lot of us." And every bean is 100 percent organically produced and Fair Trade certified. A product of the highest quality on the German market, but so far only a side job in Uganda. Apart from Ethiopia, however, Uganda is the only African country where the climatic conditions allow two coffee harvests per year.
The news of the "new gold on Ugandan plantations" has spread, including in other areas of society. "Yesterday we caught another thief," says Ronald Bule. He marches along the narrow, grass-covered path through a mixture of banana plants and coffee bushes. Lush green and many red coffee cherries hang everywhere. They are ready to be picked. All done by hand.
Ronald Bule walks nimbly over the branches, catapults the red coffee cherries into a sack. Behind him stand two young men. Worn khaki shirts, black trousers, rubber boots and two large machetes in their hands. "We patrol 24 hours a day, two by day, four by night with dogs," says shift manager Paul Shakubo.
The young man looks around regularly, walks almost silently, his knees constantly bent. "The thief had the whole sack full of coffee," he says. "We handed it over to the police."
The black market is growing
Ronald Bule raises his eyebrows. "The damage is great. They are tearing off whole branches. They are not only stealing, they are also destroying my bushes."
As coffee prices rise, the black market for illegal coffee in Uganda also grows. "They steal and sell to middlemen who have relationships with exporters," says Bule. This is how stolen coffee ends up in official export chains, and a small portion of it ends up in Germany. The cooperative loses about one percent of its harvest this way, but the figure is increasing every day. "But we're getting it under control," says Bule confidently. "I'm sure we're in for a great time."
Ronald Bule sits down next to Subi Bayliyung on the steps in front of his bottling plant. Subi is not the Chinese buyer's real first name, by the way. The Ugandan coffee farmers named him that; in the local language, "Subi" means hope. "Imagine if only every second Chinese person drinks coffee every day in the future," says Bule, laughing. "That will be crazy." Reason enough to maybe start wearing a tie again when harvesting.
The path to the big final goal leads through the medium-term goals and begins where we are now - right at the beginning: The legacy of the school, which has grown far too quickly, is much greater than we imagined when the project started. So we are currently constantly confronted with - justified - calls for help.
The situation regarding teachers' salaries has stabilized to the extent that the roof is not exactly on fire. Stable looks different, but at least something like a - albeit very unstable - balance.
In contrast, the situation in the food sector looks bleak. The following passage can also be found on the back of the current flyer:
Since the start of our heart project in spring 2024, we have been chasing the past - hopefully and not hopelessly...
In order to be able to feed the 300 students at the beginning of the next semester from February 2025, it is essential to settle the arrears to the suppliers of basic foodstuffs that have accumulated in recent years - before our commitment - more quickly than we had imagined.
We need a special short-term effort to ensure that we - the Kigezi Community School - do not fall by the wayside. The "school" is not just an anonymous institution. It is the future livelihood of thousands of (orphan) children, the life's work of the two local project managers with all their supporters on site and currently also our heart's project - hopefully for a long time to come.
Please help us to spread our short-term message directly to your personal environment – among friends, at work, in your free time or wherever.
Thank you very much for your support!
Kind regards
AMAZIMA ASSOCIATION
Jürg König, Co-President Micha Bärtschi, Co-President