MAKERERE – In Uganda, coffee is more than a crop. It is history, identity, and hard currency. The beans are among the country’s top exports, earning foreign exchange and sustaining millions of farming households. Yet, for all its importance, most of Uganda’s coffee leaves the country raw, roasted elsewhere, and sold back to the world in pricier forms.
This gap between potential and reality is what drives Professor Ivan Muzira Mukisa, a food microbiologist and Associate Professor at Makerere University. From his office at the Department of Food Technology and Nutrition, Mukisa has been pushing students and entrepreneurs to imagine coffee beyond the traditional steaming cup.
“Some people like the flavour but not the taste,” he explained in a recent interview with c-news.ug. “They don’t want to drink coffee as it is, but they enjoy the aroma. With value addition, what we try to do is provide coffee in different formats.”
Uganda’s exports hit $1.15 billion in June 2025, up an eye-catching 64 percent from the same period last year. Driving this surge were higher receipts from coffee, minerals, fish, tea, and flowers. Coffee, the country’s flagship export, stood out: earnings jumped nearly 78 percent year-on-year, powered by both higher volumes and stronger prices, according to the July 2025 Ministry of Finance economic performance report.
Experiments in a Lab
In Makerere’s labs, coffee is being reimagined. Students have experimented with yoghurt infused with roasted coffee extract. Others blended the flavour with mint to create a tea-like drink. One project produced a syrup, sweet, minty, and caffeinated, that can be spooned into hot water for an instant cup.
“These were nice, and people liked them,” Mukisa said. “But they haven’t yet been commercialised.”
The point, he added, is to widen the appeal of coffee. Not everyone enjoys the bitterness of a brewed cup, but the flavour has a universal pull. Coffee-flavoured sweets already circulate in shops. Why not yoghurt, syrup, or on-the-go drinks? “If you’re a busy student, you just boil water, add a spoon of syrup, and you have your cup in a very short time,” Mukisa explained.
Why Value Addition Matters
Uganda exports most of its coffee as green beans, earning farmers and traders a fraction of what the same beans command once roasted, packaged, and branded abroad. This is the paradox: a coffee powerhouse that rarely tastes its own wealth.
Value addition, processing coffee into new products, offers a chance to capture more of that value at home. It could also diversify markets. Consumers who dislike bitter brews might still buy coffee-based yoghurts, sweets, or ready-to-drink concoctions.
“Most people are used to taking coffee by just brewing it,” Mukisa said. “But product development allows us to innovate, to offer coffee in forms that appeal to different tastes and lifestyles.”
The challenge is not invention but translation: moving from creative experiments in a lab to products on supermarket shelves. At Makerere, steps are being taken to bridge this gap.
The university recently launched a Food Technology and Business Hub to incubate promising ideas. Here, students with viable products can refine their recipes, test them with consumers, and seek guidance on packaging and marketing. Another arm, the Makerere Incubation Centre, helps connect innovators with funding and mentorship to grow small prototypes into businesses.
“Our role as a university is to teach and do research,” Mukisa said. “But with these hubs, if someone has a viable idea, they can be incubated, grow their business, and then step out into the market.”
Regional Contrasts: Uganda, Ethiopia, and Kenya
Uganda is not alone in grappling with the question of coffee value addition. Ethiopia, often called the birthplace of coffee, has invested heavily in branding its beans as premium, single-origin products. The country has also cultivated a vibrant local coffee culture, traditional coffee ceremonies are not just rituals, but a domestic market that sustains demand. Ethiopia’s challenge is scaling processing industries to capture more export value, but its branding advantage is already global.
Kenya, by contrast, has built its reputation on high-quality Arabica beans, auction systems, and specialty markets. Kenyan coffee enjoys strong recognition among roasters worldwide, and small-scale efforts in roasting and packaging for export have taken root. However, local consumption remains limited compared to Ethiopia, and much of Kenya’s coffee still exits as raw beans, similar to Uganda.
Uganda’s strength lies in volume; it is Africa’s largest exporter of coffee after Ethiopia, but its weakness is the thin domestic market and limited value addition. While Ethiopia leans on heritage and Kenya on quality auctions, Uganda has yet to carve out a distinct global identity. Its experiments in yoghurt, syrups, and ready-to-drink products show creativity, but until they are scaled, the country risks remaining a supplier of raw material for others to profit from.
The Missing Middle
Still, the road ahead is steep. Value addition requires investment in processing plants, branding, and distribution networks, resources most smallholders lack. Uganda has long relied on exporting raw beans because it is simpler, even if it is less profitable. Bridging that gap between production and innovation will demand coordination between universities, entrepreneurs, government, and the private sector.
Yet the experiments in Makerere’s labs hint at possibility. Coffee, Uganda’s most famous crop, could one day be tasted not only in export-grade beans but also in yoghurts, syrups, sweets, and drinks that carry its flavour to new audiences.
The global appetite is there. What remains is for Uganda to claim more of the value hidden in its beans. As Mukisa put it, the goal is not to replace the brewed cup, but to broaden the ways coffee lives in daily life. “With innovation,” he said, “we can make coffee available in formats that suit every taste.”
Looking Ahead: Coffee and Africa’s Economic Vision
The debate over coffee value addition is not just about Uganda’s economy, it is tied to Africa’s wider aspirations under Agenda 2063 and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Both frameworks emphasize industrialization, intra-African trade, and the move from exporting raw commodities to producing finished goods that carry greater value.
Coffee offers a clear test case. Instead of competing only in bulk exports of green beans, Uganda could position itself as a hub for innovative coffee products tailored to African consumers, ready-to-drink coffees for busy urban markets, coffee-flavoured snacks for young demographics, and premium packaged syrups or roasted beans for regional supermarkets. AfCFTA’s promise of reduced trade barriers makes this not just possible, but urgent: Ugandan brands could find new markets in Nairobi, Kigali, Lagos, or Johannesburg without the heavy costs of exporting outside the continent.
Agenda 2063 envisions “an Africa that trades with itself and tells its own story.” Coffee, reimagined through value addition, could be part of that story, one where Uganda is not just a supplier of raw beans to Europe and Asia, but a creator of African products for African markets. The challenge now is scaling the creativity of Makerere’s labs into industries that can thrive under continental frameworks.
If Uganda seizes the moment, the humble bean could be more than an export; it could be a symbol of Africa’s determination to keep more of its wealth at home.
