Uganda researchers develop Excelsa coffee to boost climate resilience and markets

Uganda’s coffee sector is testing whether Excelsa can move from forest curiosity to a bankable crop, with early trials pointing to higher yields, climate resilience and better earnings than traditional varieties. At the center of the push is the National Agricultural Research Organisation, which is trying to turn Coffea dewevrei, known to farmers as Kisansa, into something buyers can actually trust at scale.

Dr. Yona Baguma, NARO’s director general, said at a trial field in Kamenyamiggo in Lwengo district that farmers already know the crop well, but researchers still need to build the evidence on conservation, planting material development, quality profiling and market positioning. His pitch is straightforward: if Excelsa is established properly, it could expand Uganda’s coffee base beyond Robusta and Arabica.

That work is being run through the National Agricultural Research Laboratories at Kawanda under the project Development of Excelsa Coffee under Global Change. Dr. Catherine Kiwuka, NARO’s lead scientist on the project, said the effort brings in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Makerere University, Kyagalanyi Coffee Limited and farmers, with financial support from the Calleva Foundation. On Thursday, the group held a focused engagement with farmers and took them through an on-station field trial, where they compared different Excelsa materials and gave feedback on growth, flowering, fruiting, management, field performance, challenges and perceived advantages.

The farmer questions were the ones that matter if this crop is ever going to leave the research plot: where the planting material will come from, whether buyers will show up, how the coffee will be processed and what the market will pay. That matters because some of the early work is already suggesting commercial upside. Recent reporting on the same initiative says Excelsa selections have shown higher yields, stronger climate resilience and improved earnings, and that scientists are trying to identify superior varieties before any official release to farmers.

The regional picture gives the project more urgency. A 2023 Kew report said Uganda has four indigenous wild coffee species, including C. dewevrei, and said the species is endangered in Uganda. It also warned that wild coffee populations are under pressure from climate change, encroachment, illegal logging and charcoal burning. Kew’s broader Excelsa and Liberica work in Uganda is focused on field and farm trials, genomic and metabolomic research, value-chain support and farmer training, which is exactly the sort of groundwork buyers usually want before they commit.

The commercial case is getting harder to ignore as well. Uganda exported 8.4 million 60-kilogram bags of coffee worth US$2.4 billion in the 12 months from November 2024 to October 2025, up from 5.8 million bags worth US$1.3 billion in the previous year, according to the Coffee Department in the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries. With that kind of momentum behind the sector, Excelsa is no longer being framed as a botanical side note. It is being positioned as the crop that could widen Uganda’s coffee story, if the quality data, planting material and buyer confidence all line up.