Uganda will this week host Africa’s biggest Coffee meeting. Going under the theme “Sustainable Coffee Industry For Social Economic Transformation”, the African Fine Coffees Association (AFCA) conference is to be held at the Kampala Serena Hotel from 14th to 16th February.
More than 1500 delegates and exhibitors from different countries are expected to attend the conference. During the three days conferenece, there will be Speakers from different parts of the world discussing different topics in the coffee industry.
According to Laura Walusimbi, the Corporate Communications Manager at Uganda Coffee Development Authority, they have partnered with AFCA and Agricultural Business Initiative aBi-Trust to make the conference a success.
“As you may be aware, Uganda is the birthplace of Robusta coffee. As government, we are promoting the second most traded commodity in the world because it contributes 20-30% of the country’s foreign exchange earnings. It is Uganda’s number one visible export,” Ms Walusimbi said.
Uganda has two types of coffee. Robusta coffee, which makes up 80% of the coffee produced, and Arabica coffee which constitutes 20%.
“We are the number one exporters of coffee in Africa. Currently we are exporting about 4.6 million 60-kg bags of coffee. In April 2017, President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, launched a coffee roadmap for the private and public sectors to increase this to 20million bags by 2025. When that happens, we will move from being 8th largest producer on world market to among the top three in the world.”
The aBi has contributed Shs211million towards the AFCA Coffee conference.
This is the third time that Uganda is hosting the AFCA coffee Conference
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