Uganda, Africa’s top coffee exporter, registered the highest monthly shipments this year in February following the fruition of newly planted coffee plants and favourable weather.
Earnings from coffee shipments in the month increased to $50.5 million, up 8 per cent from a year earlier, rebounding from a decline in January, according to data from the Uganda Coffee Development Authority.
The country exported 562,763 coffee bags in February, up 18.9 per cent from a year earlier. In January, the quantity shipped abroad fell 5 per cent while receipts dropped 17.3 per cent. A bag weighs 60 kilograms.
The rise in exports was due to an increase in shipments of robusta beans, mainly used in instant coffee, “on account of fruition of the newly planted coffee as well as favourable weather” and because of “a positive trend in global coffee prices which influenced exporters to offload more coffee,” according to UCDA.
The volume of robusta bean shipments rose 28.7 per cent year on year to 500,685 bags while earnings climbed 18.2 per cent to $40.9m. Arabica exports, on the other hand, dropped 26.4 per cent and 20.7 per cent in volume and value, respectively.
Uganda was Africa’s largest coffee exporter in the four months to January, shipping 1.7 million bags while Ethiopia, in second position, shipped 798,000 bags, according to the International Coffee Organisation. In January, Uganda was the world’s sixth-largest overall exporter after Brazil, Vietnam, Colombia, Indonesia, and Honduras.
UCDA projects that coffee exports in March will decline to 500,000 bags because “the main harvesting period in [the] central and eastern regions is at its tail end.” It does not rule out an increase, however, on the account of rising global prices.
