Uganda coffee farmers could produce 40 million bags by 2030

Uganda’s coffee sector is being asked to think far beyond its official 20 million-bag target. A leading coffee executive has argued that 3.5 million smallholder farmers could push output to 40 million bags by 2030 if the right mix of grants, better farm practices, and visible high-yield models is scaled across the country.

That ambition lands against a roadmap that was already bold by Ugandan standards. The Coffee Roadmap, launched in 2017 after a 2014 directive from President Yoweri Museveni, was built around renovating and rehabilitating smallholder farms and lifting production from about 3.5 million 60-kg bags to 20 million by 2030. Earlier planning documents said that if Uganda hit that mark, export earnings could reach about US$1.5 billion to US$2.2 billion, while the gains were meant to improve livelihoods for more than 1.7 million smallholder coffee farmers.

The gap between the plan and the field is still the real story. Uganda produced about 9.3 million 60-kg bags in FY 2024/25, up from 7.75 million bags in FY 2019/20, according to the agriculture ministry. State House said coffee export value climbed from US$845 million in FY 2022/23 to US$1.144 billion in FY 2023/24, showing that the sector is moving, but still far short of the scale implied by 20 million bags, let alone 40 million.

Recent government actions have focused on the basics that determine whether yield gains stick. Officials said more than 85 million coffee seedlings were supplied, more than 15 million old trees were stumped out, 150,000 bags of organic fertiliser were distributed, and disease-resistant varieties were promoted. The National Coffee Amendment Bill, signed into law on December 23, 2024, folded the Uganda Coffee Development Authority into the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries as part of a wider sector reset.

That makes the next phase less about slogans than about farm economics. Uganda remains Africa’s leading coffee exporter, and coffee supports more than 1.7 million households, with some estimates putting the rural reach closer to 1.8 million. Reaching 40 million bags would demand more than optimism: it would require better inputs, stronger training, financing that reaches smallholders, reliable planting material, and processing quality that can keep pace with the volume. Without that, the sector’s highest projections risk staying on paper while the farm gate does the hard math.