President Museveni has rallied the private sector and investors to champion value addition in order to stop exportation of labour.
Uganda donates thousands of jobs to other economies as a result of exporting high-value commodities in their raw form, according to Mr Museveni.
He added that the practice is rampant across the country’s economic sectors, depriving the economy of much-needed jobs for its majority young population.
“We have a wide spectrum of raw materials in Uganda, but the problem is that we do not add value to them and this is one of the reasons for poverty,” Mr Museveni told the community of elite and influential Lohana investors attending the International Business Forum that came to a close last week.
According to the President, every kilogramme of exported value-added coffee fetches 10 times more in earnings compared to when sold in its raw form.  Of the $460 billion global coffee market, he notes that coffee-producing countries, including Uganda, share just about $26 billion.
But if roasted, ground, and packaged per kilogramme, coffee instead of attracting Shs9,400 ($2.5 per Kg), will fetch $25 (Shs94,000) per Kg. “And that means all jobs will [be] exported to where the value is added—so value addition comes with jobs,” he said.
In the quest to further increase earnings generated from coffee – one of the three traditional cash crops, supporting 3.5 million Ugandans at all levels of the value chain, especially for income security – the government through the Agriculture ministry has entered a partnership that will see proper quality control measures in the coffee value chain.
This has been exemplified by sourcing of a quality control value chain expert from South Korea after an arrangement between the Ministry of Agriculture and the Korean Institute for Advancement of Technology has been struck, according to a statement issued by the Korea International Agribusiness Development Institute.
To ensure proper quality controls in critical elements of the coffee value chain, the expertise of the Korean value chain, Mr Cheol-ok Kim, comes in handy, according to the Ministry of Agriculture technocrats and sector analysts interviewed.
This development will, among other things, pave the way for the direct export of the country’s coffee to South Korea whose coffee per capita consumption as of 2020 stood at 353 cups per year – nearly three times higher than the global average of 132 cups.

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