Kyabwire

Our first ever Ugandan lot from the amazing Empaako collective, bringing smaller scale farmers together in Western, Uganda.

We were very fortunate to meet Kabuuka Elimethidas, co-founder and producer at Empaako Collective, at World of Coffee Brussels earlier this year. We’re incredibly grateful to him for introducing us to this beautiful coffee and to represent the producers of Kyabwire.

Being able to share the coffee of the Kyabwire farmers with you is a testament to Semilla’s overall goal to represent farmers at the very periphery of the supply chain.

The farmer’s coffee gardens individually average up less then 0.75 acres, some even under 0.25 acres. Meaning a majority of their lots are too small for traditional export, but by joining together they are able to ship their coffee under the Kyabwire name.

Thanks to enormous efforts of Kajumba Stella one of Kyabwire's producers, the group is having better access to the market and information.

Through learning how to use a smartphone they're able to enter the harvest data of the 11 growers from their remote area, even having to go to the city center to get enough data to run the Emata financing app. Empaako Collective and Semilla were able export to Europe in this very first season of the Kyabwire group.

In the past, the farmers in the villages of Nyango, Lwabana and Kighumu have been victims of several fraudulent practices of intermediaries and small cooperatives who took cherries on debt and never showed up again. The group also shared more insights in intermediaries behaviour at purchasing the growers cherries: While there was never a transparency on pricing (even changing throughout the day, usually dropping massively in late afternoon), many buyers have also used rigged scales which would weigh up to 7kg less than what’s actually been delivered.

Thus, another key policy within Empaako’s operation is only working with agents who are part of the very same community and have been confirmed as trustworthy by the whole group.