Reclaim Sustainability! Programme Baseline Report – Coffee Program, Uganda and Kenya

Overview

Baseline for the Reclaim Sustainability! Coffee programme (2021-2025), funded by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It covered Kenya and Uganda and focused on two areas: sustainable natural resource management and fair value distribution. It assessed the civil society organisations, private and public sector actors and policy environment active in the sector. It set baseline indicator values, found the policy advocacy stage where the project could engage, and checked the proposal targets. Key informants came from national and county/district government, the private sector and CSOs. Data were collected in July-August 2021.

Key findings

• Kenya has no coffee sector law in force. Two competing bills are pending (Coffee Bill 2020 in the Senate, Coffee Bill 2021 in the National Assembly), and there is no national or county coffee development or extension policy.
• Uganda's National Coffee Law 2021 was still in parliament. The National Coffee Road Map (finalised 2019) aims to raise value by 15% by 2025-2030. Farmers receive 75%-80% of the FOB coffee price.
• Kenya's auction market is concentrated: in Oct 2020-Aug 2021, 6 buyers controlled over 70% of traded value and the top 10 controlled 85%.
• Kenyan yields average about 2 kg of cherry per tree against a potential of up to 40 kg. Production was 45,000 tons in 2018/19, compared with an all-time high of 129,000 tons in 1987/88.
• In Uganda, over 1.7 million households grow coffee, mostly on less than an acre. Coffee takes up about 20% of household plots but provides about 50% of household income.
• Women provide most coffee labour but rarely own land. A cited study in Kanungu found women do 58% of fieldwork and 78% of post-harvest labour and earn 38% less than men.
• CSOs run lobby campaigns as time-limited donor-funded projects, and several lack staff and evidence-generation capacity for lobbying and advocacy.

Recommendations

• Kenya: lobby to harmonise the competing coffee bills, revise the Cooperatives Act and domesticate it in counties, and support national and county coffee development and extension policies.
• Kenya: address the ageing farmer base through youth access to land, inputs and markets, and push for joint (male and female) membership of farmer organisations so women can access finance and benefits.
• Uganda: lobby for the National Coffee Law to be enacted with provisions on gender, youth and extension, and for full implementation of the National Coffee Road Map.
• Uganda: lobby for a coffee auction and marketing reforms, promote cooperatives to strengthen farmers' bargaining power, and extend the national sustainability platform to district level.
• Promote natural resource management awareness among farmers through multi-stakeholder participation, and popularise private sector models that improve inclusion and value distribution.
• Strengthen sector-wide civil society organisations and platforms to lead lobbying, with support for evidence building, policy drafting and public participation meetings.

Methodology

Participatory, qualitative approach: review of coffee sector policies, laws and regulations, plus purposive key informant interviews with CSOs, government agencies and NGOs. There were 26 respondents in Kenya and 28 in Uganda, interviewed online, by phone or in person. Uganda interviews were mostly remote because of a COVID-19 lockdown.