Mahmood Mamdani - as a side comment in Scholars in the Marketplace - tells us that when the IMF and World Bank pushed their debilitating privatisation drive across Africa - which ruined many still agrarian economies - in Uganda specifically, they found some subserviently willing allies.
The former rebels of NRA/M, only recently arrived from the bush, saw privatisation as an opportunity to enrich themselves. (They actually own many, many things, including estates and farms hitherto belonging to people of Uganda). These former rebels also understood that privatisation would enable them immense political control over an impoverished mass.
Indeed, Mamdani continues, even when the WB and IMF walked back on some of their dangerous proclamations, Museveni and co. simply doubled down. It was under the 1990s structural adjustment/ privatisation drive that Uganda Coffee Marketing Board (CMB) was liquidated.
Scholarly opinion is divided on whether CMB was still viable. But we can conclude that this conspiracy of the IMF-WB-NRA dangerously committed to liberalising markets was unstoppable. They were ready to liberalise coffee trade whatever the operational circumstances of CMB.
With CMB down, the cooperatives and growers' unions went down with it. Again, it is only fair to say that no amount of positive accountability would save any agencies from being liberalised or liquidated.
However, while IMF-WB-NRA/M were "freeing" coffee trade from government control, they still needed a government unit to ensure quality beans, and increased productivity. This is where Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) was born. It would be doing the same things as CMB, but without the trading function - without dealing in money.
UCDA, AND MWANYI TERIMBA
To its credit, UCDA for a long time, worked to motivate coffee farmers whose enthusiasm had declined. Remember around this time, government was gambling with several other "non-traditional cash crops." They, too, had given up on coffee. But thriving on the expertise and pedigree of CMB - almost all former CMB workers carried on as UCDA workers with almost same positions - they turned things around.
It has taken time, and a lot has changed. Buganda Katikkiro, Owek. Charles Peter Mayiga, with his Mwanyi Terimba campaign took this thing to another level. Working alongside UCDA, farmers in Buganda and surrounding areas were motivated to rehabilitate old fields. More peasants and minimum-scale farmers joined.
Steadily volumes have gone up, just as quality has. Indeed, while a huge percentage of market share goes to foreigners who dominate the sale of our coffee at a whopping 75%, local farmers have seen some small monies entering their pockets.
It needs to be emphasised that the money coming to the Ugandan farmer is comparatively very small. When Uganda records $1.35bn in coffee earning in a year, the foreign traders who control 75% of the industry, despite being registered in Uganda, have their headquarters in Bonn, London, Singapore and elsewhere. Thus, a huge chunk of that money stays outside Uganda.
THE FALLACY OF "VALUE ADDITION"
Sadly, the response to small money coming into Uganda, Yoweri Museveni and his hangers on, have reduced the problem to "value addition."
But as Kenyan economist David Ndi, put it, "value addition is a cockroach idea," that is, a bad idea that keeps coming back however much one wants to kill it. Because the best of coffee is that which is ground at the point of consumption. Indeed, the best value addition is making sure the quality of beans the farmers produce is of superb quality - and that the farmers gets the values worth for their super beans.
This is what UCDA/Charles Peter Mayiga have focused on - and needs more support. I still struggle to understand why a farmer who spends years growing coffee tree (planting, watering, covering, weeding, treating, picking, drying, etc.) creates less value than a middleman or the brewers/cafes that spend just hours.
I have heard arguments that coffee is expensive in a café, because a café "sells culture" (décor, ambience, etc.) thus more value. But why shouldn't a farmer be cued to earn from their product proportionate with the platform at which it is being sold as happens in all other products? Would a café sell culture without the coffee?
But all these are cockroach arguments: Many other coffee-selling countries earn from their coffee by bargaining enough from their beans, because making the coffee available is the original value created. Value addition in this context would mean producing world-class beans of whatever type - and marketing them as such. This is UCDA.
THE PAINS OF TRANSACTIONAL POLITICS
The point of contention is Museveni's commitment to transactional politics. This does not enable him to see empowered masses. Even at 80 years of age-so we are told-this man sees himself governing to 100 years, and believes only the poor can be governed. Fortunately,
or unfortunately, coffee appears to be thriving without his control.
He has been trying to get his hands onto it for the last 15 years. Enter Odrek Rwabwogo and Nelson Tugume and others: these men fully understood Museveni's dilemma and have offered to help him. It should be obvious that in seeking to dismantle UCDA (whatever terminologies), the entire gamble is to quietly, tactfully create room for these men to grab the industry.
They will individually profit but will ultimately pass control to Yoweri Museveni. No wonder these are the men endlessly chanting "value addition, "value addition."
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Nelson Tugume's Coffee Investment Consortium Uganda (CICU) has already humongous amounts of money - first Shs 38bn, and another $36 million as reported in the local dailies. Perhaps and much more unreported. Not too long ago, comrade brother Odrek Rwabwogo opened a coffee bar/café in the small European city of Belgrade - of course, with enormous taxpayers' money.
Indeed, history tells us that while the coloniser had dangerous motives, they often found willing compradors with equally dangerous motives over their compatriots. Yoweri Museveni has so far issued three zig-zaggy statements - and certainly more are coming. He has not only contradicted and confused himself and entire the country, but he is determined to go all the way.
Truth is, comrade Museveni underestimates the place of coffee in the Ugandan imagination and pedigree. The most conscientious sections of Ugandans - including many NRM legislators -are children of coffee farmers. They are at pains to understand why proud cattle keepers are insistent on unfairly taking control over their prized traditional cash crop.
But as the Igbo have said, "what will kill a man, begins as an appetite."
