Northern Uganda is one of the regions with the best soils suitable for coffee growing but unfortunately, there has been minimal sensitization on the best farming practices for high coffee yields. But as a measure to attain the set target of 20 million bags of coffee by 2025, the government is rolling out a countrywide campaign to ensure coffee production in every region starting with northern Uganda. Northern Uganda is one of those regions where coffee production remains low despite having fertile soils following decades of the war. The region is best known for cotton growing and other food crops. “This is not a new thing, growing cotton is not yielding, we are not asking anybody to make up a report if it is not political science, we can decide even today and say at least in all the villages in the Acholi, all the villages in these districts in West Nile they start growing coffee starting from the next season. How? Let’s first start.”

Vincent Ssempijja the Minister for Agriculture noted that there is need to train youths to equip them with skills in coffee growing to increase production. The inspire Uganda coffee dream is to at least have each farmer produce 6 kilograms from each tree as one of the ways of increasing coffee exports. “And we are talking about productivity per tree, the countries that we are competing with no longer ask how many trees do you have or how many acres of coffee? No, it is how much coffee you get per tree. That is why Brazil has reached 15, Columbia somewhere at 13, Vietnam 11.” Minister of Northern Uganda Grace Kuwuching urged farmers to use the little they have to see that the project is a success. And since the region experiences long dry periods, there will be the use of water capture and irrigation technologies as well as shed trees, drought-resistant coffee varieties and dealing with anticipated effects of climate change.