Cafés in Uganda Kampala

Robusta's home: Lake Victoria and Buganda

Robusta grew wild along the northern shores of Lake Victoria, where Kampala now stands, and the Baganda kept it in household gardens and used it in ceremonies.² In Coffee in Buganda (1955), James W. Maina recorded its role in blood-brotherhood: two beans were taken from a berry, each man moistened one with his blood, and the two swapped them before eating.³

Here coffee was chewed long before it was brewed. Chewing was recorded in the time of the explorer John Speke in 1865, and a visitor is still often given coffee to chew: cherries picked just before they ripen, steamed, then smoke-dried.³ The British turned robusta into a cash crop.² A 1923 policy promoted a robusta selection with seedlings partly from the Ssese Islands, and by 1925 Mengo and Masaka were the main districts.³

Buganda still grows more than half of Uganda's coffee. Its kingdom runs a campaign called Emmwanyi Terimba, "coffee is a sure deal" (emmwanyi is coffee in Luganda), championed since 2016 by the Katikkiro, Buganda's prime minister, Charles Peter Mayiga.⁴

Bugisu arabica on Mount Elgon

Arabica arrived with missionaries and settlers. Father Moullec brought it from Morogoro to Handere, near Bombo, in 1900,³ and by 1914 European and Asian settlers had established the first plantations.² Many British-owned estates failed in the 1920s, and Ugandan smallholders became the main growers of both species.²

The best-known Ugandan arabica is Bugisu, grown in the volcanic soils around Mount Elgon in the east.² The mountain's summit, Wagagai, reaches 4,321 m, and the Bugisu Co-operative Union, registered in July 1954, is based in Mbale.⁸ The common varieties are Kent, Typica, SL14 and SL28.² Around Mbale, arabica is planted in March and April and harvested from August to November.⁹

From the coffee board to the ministry

The state has run Ugandan coffee closely. By December 1988 the Coffee Marketing Board could not pay farmers, and in 1991 the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) was formed as the industry was liberalized.⁹ Arabica planting expanded from the early 1990s.²

On 6 November 2024, Parliament passed the National Coffee (Amendment) Bill with 305 votes, dissolving UCDA and moving its work to a department of the agriculture ministry, with a three-year transition.⁶ Growers and traders raised concerns that support services would weaken.⁵ Smallholder robusta comes mainly from central districts such as Mukono and Luwero, shade-grown arabica from Kapchorwa and Mbale in the east, and Kasese and Bushenyi in the west grow both.⁵

Kampala: a tea city learning coffee

Ugandans have traditionally preferred tea, and the change in Kampala has come through coffee bars filled by younger customers.⁷ In 2020 Gerald Katabazi, a Kampala roaster, told Africanews that coffee had been seen as "a white man's product and also a rich man's product." He estimated that home consumption had risen from about 1% to close to 6% over a decade, and he was selling through kiosks while training baristas.⁷

The city's cafés follow its hills. Kololo, a hill of about 1,311 m close to the center, has been an upscale residential district since the 1950s and holds more than a dozen embassies and ambassadors' residences.¹⁰ Since the 2000s, hotels, banks, restaurants and bars have moved in among the houses.¹⁰