The news of the President’s assenting to the National Coffee Act recently has spread like wildfire among farmers and all stakeholders in the coffee sector. The Act has attracted a lot of attention because coffee plays such an important role in our country’s economy. 

Uganda is the second biggest coffee producer in Africa and 10th in the world. Coffee is said to be the most widely traded tropic agricultural commodity internationally and also the most traded commodity globally after oil.
It provides employment to about nine million people in Uganda through coffee related activities besides being the most important foreign exchange earner crop in the country. 

Farmers welcome coffee law
The National Coffee Act 2021 has come when Uganda now realises that coffee is a strategic commodity whose production and productivity must be enhanced and regulated to compete well with other international producers of the crop. Gerald Ssendaula, former minister of Finance and now a farmer, has told Seeds of Gold: “This is a law that we have been craving for as coffee farmers for many years. You remember we fought hard to get the National Coffee Policy which Cabinet approved in 2013 but there was still a big need for a law such as this one to safeguard and regulate good coffee production practices.”