Rowland Bon Nkahebwa July 27, 2024

Uganda makes case for roasted Coffee exports to China

Xiamen City, China

While on a five-day tour of China last week, the Presidential Advisory Committee on Exports and Industrial Development (PACEID) trade and export delegation met the country’s largest importer of coffee into China, C&D Commodities Company, and made a case for Uganda coffee to be stocked in the company’s 20,000 stores across China. Many international coffee companies have signed up for distribution of their coffees largely sourced from Africa and South America in China. C&D owns a subsidiary called Luckin Coffee, the largest in the country owned by the Government. The company imports green beans and currently roasts in the city of Shanghai.

In a session held on Sunday, April 28, 2024, in China’s tourism city of Xiamen, central west China, the team presented Uganda’s strategy for increasing roasted coffee sales into China to Mr. Bryant Du, Manager of Commodities for C&D company. The meeting was also attended by Mr. Huan Hu and other leaders for the company’s global coffee purchases.

The PACEID nine-person delegation led by their chairman, Odrek Rwabwogo who is also Senior Presidential Advisor on Special Duties, is composed of Ms. Brenda Opus, Head of Markets, Allan Mugisha, support officer on infrastructure, and other officers in the Information and technology sector. Rwabwogo told his hosts that, “Uganda is open to work with C&D right from starting a large-scale farm if they so wish to set up roasting facilities in the country co-owned with Government where possible, and to support all export orders with crop finance. This will ensure the company buying coffee does not have to frontload funds till they have made sales and got awareness of the Uganda taste with Chinese consumers”. The company raised issues of quality control, shipping and logistics, and payment systems which PACEID offered to resolve urgently to get the company in the country.

C&D Commodities is a USD150bn turnover company owned by the Chinese government since 1980. It is engaged in commodity trading, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics manufacturing and sales under license, textile production, infrastructure, and real estate. Its coffee subsidiary, Luckin Coffee Company, is one of the fastest-growing companies in China as coffee consumption expands with the increasing Chinese middle class. The country consumes more than 300,000 Metric tons, a third of this produced in China, and has over USD40bn in consumption expenditure.

Rwabwogo who made a presentation on tourism, industry, mining, and key agricultural projects in Uganda, said, “Our country and Africa know pretty well that prosperity is a shared risk as well as a gain. We no longer accept the stripping of the value of our commodities sourced from Uganda and the continent and little returns in jobs, technology, skills, and systems retained at home. This is why we share the risk in value addition of all our products. We will do whatever it takes to make sourcing, logistics, standards, and funding easier for you so that you can give us a portion of what you spend in South America and Vietnam”.

Quoting Deng Xiaoping, the late leader of China who began the economic transformation of the country in the 1980s, Rwabwogo said, “President Xiaoping taught us to try experiments in special economic zones as he did here in Xiamen and Shenzhen. He told us ‘development must be taken carefully like a man crossing the river and groping for stones not to sink and to get to the other side of the river’. We too want to progressively end the dark stain of supplying raw commodities that we suffered for the last 100 years. We want to try out processing experiments in Uganda for all our commodities and if these work, the world is happy that one nation has overcome poverty”.

The PACEID team also visited some of the largest cotton processing facilities in Guangdong province.