The Vice President, Jessica Alupo, has urged residents of the Bukedi sub-region to transition from low-margin annual crops to coffee and cocoa farming to boost household incomes and drive community development.
Speaking at the official launch of the Bukedi Coffee and Cocoa Initiative in Tororo District, Ms Alupo emphasized that coffee remains one of Uganda’s top foreign exchange earners, offering immense potential for smallholder farmers to escape poverty.
‘Plant coffee, process it well, and transform your households from poverty to prosperity. Uganda is a coffee nation, and Bukedi has fertile land that can yield high-quality coffee,’ Ms Alupo said.
She called for the robust adoption of coffee and cocoa growing across all households, challenging residents to prioritize economically viable plants over aesthetics.
‘If you can plant flowers around your compound, what is wrong with you replacing the compound flowers with coffee? At the end of the day, coffee or cocoa will earn you income that flowers would not have fetched,’ she noted.
Historically, the Bukedi sub-region has relied heavily on traditional annual crops like cotton, millet, and cassava. However, Alupo pointed out that reliance on these crops has left the region vulnerable to fluctuating market prices and a systematic decline in soil fertility.
To counteract this, she encouraged farmers to adopt modern agricultural techniques-including proper spacing, mulching, and rigorous disease management-to maximize their yields.
Early in the day, the Vice President toured the Bukedi Coffee Company Limited gardens in Papoli Village, Magola Sub-County, located along the Tororo-Jinja highway. Expressing her impression of the project’s implementation, she appealed to political, cultural, and religious leaders to champion the government’s wealth-creation drive.
The Speaker of Parliament, Jacob Marksons Oboth, echoed the call for a regional agricultural shift.
The West Budama South MP emphasized that Bukedi must not lag behind other regions that have already commercialized coffee farming.
‘All other regions have embraced coffee growing and it is my appeal that we as Bakedi can also embrace the practice. We can even plant coffee along our roads to replace the grass because our overall objective is to improve household incomes and contribute to national export growth,’ Oboth-Oboth advised.
The Minister of Agriculture, Animal Industry, and Fisheries (MAAIF), Frank Tumwebaze, commended the pioneers already engaging in the enterprise. He highlighted available government incentives, such as subsidized seedlings and specialized training programs, to support new growers.
“Bukedi has huge untapped potential in coffee farming. If well harnessed, it can lift thousands out of poverty,” Minister Tumwebaze stated.
However, local leaders noted that structural challenges must be addressed to sustain the momentum. Speaking during a stakeholder engagement at the Tororo Mayor’s Gardens, Tororo North County MP Simon Nicholas Owino urged the government to fund decentralized multiplication centers.
‘The concept has caught fire and farmers have shown immense interest, but the source of seedlings remains a challenge. We appeal to the government through MAAIF to establish mother gardens and multiplication centers in every district to guarantee genetic uniformity and pest resistance,’ Owino noted.