OP-ED: For the last year, Ugandans have speculated about our work in Ntungamo District, where Inspire Africa Group (IAG) is establishing a Coffee Industrial Park, to lead the coffee value addition efforts in Uganda. The Park, which will have the biggest coffee processing plant in Eastern and Central Africa, will use the latest freeze-dry technology to locally produce the refined coffee that Africa has been importing and ready-to-drink coffee for export. IAG products will include instant coffee, ground coffee, roasted coffee, coffee energy drinks and coffee beauty cosmetics, totalling 15,000 MT annually.
On top of the Coffee processing plant, the 150—acre Africa Coffee Park will host a 4,000—seater Sports Complex, a 1,000—seater Convention Centre, a Business Centre, a Coffee Academy, an Exhibition Centre and an IT park that will champion Africa’s Artificial Intelligence vision.
It is important to note that while we (Africans) call coffee a cash crop, other countries call it an industry. The global coffee industry is valued at USD 460 billion, but Africa earns only USD 2.5 billion. The USD 2.5 billion is just a buy-off of the raw material form (green bean), which accounts for only 12% of the World’s production.
A kilogramme of green bean coffee of good quality may go for USD 2.5. The same quantity of coffee roasted, ground and packaged may go for USD 40. This is where there is a massive haemorrhage of money from the Global South to the Global North. It is not only the loss of money per kilogramme. It is also the loss of jobs. If you take the whole value chain of raw materials from agriculture, minerals, forest products, etc., the loss to Africa is massive.
To raise the value of Uganda’s coffee from the current USD 2.5 per kilo to USD 40 per kilo will require us to go into other economies and pull their money into Uganda. This will only work through unconventional means. Inspire Africa Group (IAG) proposes a new approach to increase the value of Uganda coffee export revenue for the sustainable growth of the coffee sector. We have called this the Africa Renaissance Mission — a campaign that will grow our coffee revenue from the current USD 1 billion to USD 5 billion in five years. USD 4 billion will be raised through coffee exports, and USD 1 billion from coffee tourism.
The Africa Renaissance Mission will include the Coffee Tourism Experience Marketing strategy. There are many coffee-producing countries in the world. However, the final consumer of coffee, especially in the Global North, doesn’t consume the type or quality of the coffee. They consume the story of the coffee. This explains our strategy to bring on board African icons such as Tanzania’s Diamond Platinumz to tell the story of Africa’s coffee to the world. Diamond has over 20 million followers on his various social media platforms. These include many coffee consumers within and out of Africa — a huge market we can tap into.
I can relate our coffee tourism strategy to what the Government of Rwanda has done in Europe with the leading football clubs. You must have seen clubs like Arsenal and PSG wearing jerseys branded Visit Rwanda. This strategy doesn’t just target the players. It targets the thousands of fans across the globe who enjoy the game of football. Today, when a football fan from France is travelling for a holiday to Rwanda, he has a sense of belonging in the country because of Rwanda’s association with the Paris Saint-Germain Football Club.
Another perfect example is the case of both Fly Emirates and Qatar Airways. The last couple of decades have given the Middle East very bad publicity, especially after 9/11 when Al-Qaeda attacked the World Trade Centre in New York. Some of the biggest brands from the Middle East, including airlines, suffered a negative impact on the stock markets. To alleviate this, both Fly Emirates and Qatar Airways entered the European Sports scene as sponsors of football clubs. Fly Emirates sponsors both Arsenal and Real Madrid, while Qatar Airways sponsors PSG and Inter Milan. Similarly, several football fans all over the world, while booking an air ticket, will choose a brand associated with their football club. That is the power of influencer marketing.
Therefore, through our coffee tourism strategy, we envision that coffee consumers will visit Uganda, take coffee while in Uganda, and it is estimated that if a tourist visitor comes to Uganda and spends a week, they can consume about 200 grams of soluble coffee.
Secondly, we predict that coffee consumers will visit Uganda, buy coffee to carry back with to their countries. It is estimated that one visitor can carry with them at least 1 kilogramme of coffee.
Thirdly, we expect that coffee consumers will get accustomed to Ugandan coffee taste and begin ordering the coffee online, or will get tired of delayed delivery online and demand stores in their countries to stock Ugandan coffee. This will introduce Uganda coffee brand onto the shelves of other countries.
To distribute the 7,200 MT of roasted coffee from the Africa Coffee Park, you need a total of 6,000,000 visitors in a year each buying averagely 1.2Kg of high value- added coffees.
This will require Inspire Africa Group and Uganda Tourism Board to focus on activities that will attract visitors to Uganda to increase the numbers from the current 704,012 to 6,000,000. These include seemingly coffee-unrelated activities such as Coffee marathon, Africa Coffee Festival, Coffee Concerts, Business Forums, Barista Competitions, Coffee DJ shows, among others.
The writer is Nelson Tugume the CEO of Inspire Africa Group (IAG)
