In Uganda most farmers dealing in the coffee value chain are mainly adults who are not in the youth bracket.

However this trend is changing because a good number of youth are now engaged in coffee farming and agribusiness related activities in the coffee value chain.

As such a number of development partners have come on board to train the youth on best practices right from the coffee farm to harvesting and to value addition in a bid to create employment and to earn income.

One such initiative is where the Young Farmers Federation of Uganda (UNFYA) is partnering with development partners to conduct activities of training selected youth in Uganda and in Germany about strategies of embracing the coffee value chain as a business.

Coffee exchange programme

The German-Ugandan Youth Exchange for Sustainable Economic Partnerships in the Coffee Sector is an innovative youth exchange project that will be conducted from June 2025 to March 2026.

The Project Coordinator Samuel Magezi explaining to ScienceDigest25 notes that the project at its core is the exchange between young people from Uganda and Germany, who together will learn about the entire coffee value chain from cultivation in Uganda to marketing in Germany.

The project focuses on the question of how young people from both countries can acquire knowledge for innovative, sustainable business ideas through practical experience and to what extent the partnerships that emerge can contribute to fair trade conditions and improved incomes for Ugandan coffee farmers.

This is because intercultural exchange plays a central role in understanding global economic relationships.

He notes that as one of the most traded agricultural products worldwide, coffee represents an important source of income for many producing countries, while challenges such as unequal distribution of profits along the value chain and precarious working conditions persist.

There is significant number of opportunities which exist for young people to maximize their benefits from the coffee sector, not only in production but increasingly at downstream stages.

Trained youth are best positioned to adapt modern technology in production and post-harvest handling.

Provision of services by groups have been successfully introduced, including in the rehabilitation and maintenance of coffee gardens and the management of storage facilities.

The exchange takes place on equal terms and enables a change of perspective that is enriching for both sides. Participants become multipliers for sustainable development and fair trade.

Program Structure and Content

The exchange spans a period of ten months and combines digital collaboration with two intensive face-to-face learning phases.

At the beginning, German and Ugandan participants are divided into pairs that work together throughout the entire project.

After a digital preparation phase with workshops on coffee production and intercultural cooperation, the German participants travel to Uganda for 16 days, where they gain practical experience on coffee farms and visit different stations of the local value chain together with their Ugandan partners.

In the subsequent intermediate phase, the pairs develop initial business ideas in regular online meetings.

In December 2025, the second face-to-face phase follows in Germany, where the Ugandan participants will go to gain insights into the German coffee industry and work with their German partners on concrete business concepts.

The conclusion is a digital presentation of the developed concepts to industry representatives, offering participants a platform to present their ideas for sustainable trade partnerships to a professional audience.

Target Group and Participants

Five young people between the ages of 19 and 30 have been selected to participate from each country.

The participants from Uganda come from the field of coffee production and young coffee farmers with university backgrounds, students of agricultural sciences or young entrepreneurs in the coffee sector.

The German participants have backgrounds in agriculture, economics and some are operating come coffee roasteries, import companies and cafés.

The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) to the tune of 19,000 Euros.

Training progress

A team of five youths from Germany are already in Uganda for practical sessions of coffee farming.

Part of their sensitization exercise was experts from the National Union of Coffee Agribusinesses and Farm Enterprises (NUCAFE) training them about the coffee value chain best practices and opportunities for the youth.

The manager green coffee unit Ms Mercy Kemigisha explained to the team that NUCAFE is company that deals directly with coffee farmers across the country totalling 2million and 2.7 million farmer Associations.

The modal is that the farmer Association bulk coffee bean which is well dried and is sold to company.

But before the coffee beans are processed for sell, the company reaches out to the farmers by engaging its agronomists to take them through best practices in order to obtain quality coffee bean

Coffee processors are given hurlers which they can use for processing raw coffee bean to the required quality.

The price offered to the farmers is Shs25, 000 per kg for grade AA for Arabica coffee and Shs22, 000 per kg for grade AB.

The price of Robusta coffee grades 15 and 12 is Shs11, 800 and Shs11, 500 respectively.

The Association managers are given smart phones to access information about market prices and weather forecast among others.

The team also engages the youth in skilling them mainly in value addition with a target of creating jobs for themselves.

Most of the youths are agricultural students in Universities namely Ndejje and Makerere University.

Kemigisha urged the Germany youths to grab all the knowledge from resource persons and their twin colleagues since they participate at the ending point of the value chain not knowing how quality coffee is attained before it reaches the cup after brewing.

The voice of the youths

Julius Saazi is the general manager of Opportunity Manya Transformation Services Ltd, a coffee agribusiness company based in Rakai district.

The company operates coffee nursery bed for varieties namely KR1, 3,4,5,6,7,8,9 and10 which can accommodate up to 1000 seedling,

His team conducts coffee bean processing since they own a coffee hurling machine. The concentrates in hurling quality coffee beans of grade AA of Arabica coffee and grade 15-18 of Robusta coffee.

The team participates in the value chain up to brewing because they do roast grind and brew for coffee lovers. They also package the coffee in powder form in different packages sold at different prices.

Saazi and team work with farmers whom they have identified with the greater Masaka but for Robusta Coffee they source it farmers mainly in the Elgon region.

He noted that the Germany youths are mainly those upgrading their studies with focus on European Union Deforestation Regulation (UEDR).

It's a European Union law aimed at preventing the sale of products in the EU market that are linked to deforestation and forest degradation.

He contends that although Ugandan coffee farmers do not practice coffee farming in deforested land, they have since complied by making sure the Ministry of Agriculture registers and them and mapped their lands as well.

Judith Kraemer is a Germany youth working with Fair Trade Company as a certification officer for coffee farmers in the global South.

She says, she has never seen a coffee plantation and this is an opportunity for her because she will be able to identify challenges farmers are faced with to ensure consumers abroad obtain quality coffee.

Her company mostly sources coffee from Brazil but this sexercise will open opportunities for Ugandan coffee since they source coffee for various countries namely Australia Switzerland and Germany among others.

Challenges and opportunities in the Coffee sector

Kemigisha explained that there are a number of opportunities in the coffee sector including farmers being part of the 20 million bags to be attained by 2030. This means they must be part of the value addition and industrialization process.

This means there will be expansion in the domestic market and internationally in countries such as China and India.

The challenges include dissolution of the Uganda Coffee Development Authority whose experts were always on ground to guide the farmers.

Others are climate change impacts of prolonged drought and flash floods which affects coffee yields.

Quality inputs are a challenge with adulterated inputs being sold in the open market as well as lack of market infrastructure and middle men offering low price to the farmers