Uganda Zukuka Bora - Part 1: The Best Wake Up
Zukuka Bora Coffee Company is one of the most distinctive specialty coffee projects in Uganda’s Mount Elgon region. Founded in 2015 as a side-project of JENGA Community Development, it began with a simple but ambitious goal: to help local farmers rebuild confidence in coffee by creating a reliable route to the specialty market. Ten years on, Zukuka Bora works with hundreds of farming families, operates washing stations across Mount Elgon, and has become a story of quality coffee, long-term partnership and Ugandan-led growth.
The Best Wake Up
It’s 2015. Bowie and Prince are alive. A German called Jurgen is about to move to the great city of Liverpool. Words like “Brexit” and “Trump” are mere novelty news items, calmly filed away in the “never gonna happen” folder of our collective consciousness.
Along a bumpy mountain track in Uganda’s rugged far east, a bizarre contraption – somehow both familiar and confusing in nature – is drawing in a crowd of curious locals. With its sturdy frame, rotating cranks and metal chain, this Frankenstein’s monster of a machine is easily identified as some sort of bicycle, though its intended function is, to most, a complete mystery.
On one side sits a young man, mounted in the classical fashion, gripping the handlebars and casually pedalling. His huge smile belies the underlying sense of comedy to this affair. In a corner of the world where the exercise bike market is yet to really take off, a bicycle which travels nowhere is an absurd, and patently funny object. In front of the rider is a stack of equipment which ordinarily has no place near a bike. In place of wheels, the pedals rotate a sort of perforated metal cylinder. Atop is set an improvised hopper, its contents easily recognised by the gathering crowd as ripe coffee cherries.
Coffee has a rich heritage here, having first been brought over the border from neighbouring Kenya in the 1920s. As one of Uganda’s highest altitude growing regions, Mount Elgon has become the most famous region in Uganda for Arabica coffee production and for many of the local people, it is their only so-called ‘cash crop’; the only thing which they grow for income rather than sustenance. Here, as in many places, the difference between a good and bad coffee crop is counted not in profit lines but in real-world tangibles: whether your kids go to school next term, whether you can afford basic clothing, soap and food.
The curious failure of locomotion at the centre of this commotion is in fact a coffee pulper, or at least an approximation of one, and it represents the start of an exciting new journey for a group of Ugandan producers. Zukuka Bora Coffee Company was founded in 2015 as a side-project of an NGO called JENGA Community Development. JENGA, meaning “to build” in Swahili, chose their name to reflect their capacity-building philosophy, their core focus being collaboration with communities on projects which grow capacity for self-sustainability.
Where to Begin?
Like all good NGOs, this journey started with community engagement and open minds. In a region saturated with well-meaning but occasionally-tone-deaf charities, this sort of engagement is critical to long term success. The message from these communities was clear: coffee used to sustain families here. Farmers remembered a time when coffee income reliably covered school costs and brought household stability. Over recent decades, that changed. The market for Ugandan coffee in the area weakened, buyers were cautious about quality, and many farmers began to lose confidence in coffee altogether. Some even cut down coffee trees because the work simply no longer felt worth it.
JENGA’s first response was familiar territory for them: training. A demonstration garden was planted to showcase best-practice coffee cultivation. Farmers appreciated the knowledge, but they were clear about the missing piece: training does not help if there is no market paying for quality. Local buyers often purchased parchment, or cherry of mixed ripeness, with little incentive for careful picking. Farmers said what they needed was access to the specialty market; a real connection to buyers who would reward quality.
JENGA needed to step out of their comfort zone. They needed a coffee company.
How to Start a Coffee Company
JENGA, collectively knowing nothing about coffee, put someone on the case. Dave Bishop, a fresh-faced volunteer from Bristol, had moved with his young family to Mbale in 2014. Dave arrived with an extensive CV: an MSc in Sustainable Development, nine years experience working for a large consultancy firm and a 3 year stint at Oxfam where he was tasked with rigorously evaluating the impact of Oxfam’s projects around the world. Dave was both highly qualified and, together with his wife, highly motivated to make a tangible difference in some of Africa’s poorest communities.
However, whilst embarking on this new adventure necessitated the adoption of an open mind, it’s safe to say coffee production was not on Dave’s bingo card. Like the rest of the JENGA team, Dave was not a ‘coffee person’. JENGA’s bread and butter was education, healthcare, and community infrastructure (you know, NGO stuff). What Dave did have in abundance was drive, community relationships, and an insatiable curiosity. They named the project “Zukuka Bora”, or “the best wake up”, a reflection of their vision to revitalise a dormant local industry. But how do you start a coffee company from scratch?
Step 1: Coffee. Well this part was easy. The very communities which JENGA were working in had coffee in abundance. A little neglected due to lack of incentive perhaps, but coffee nonetheless. No need to buy up vast swathes of farm land. No need even to plant new trees. The proverbial black gold was bubbling away under their feet, if only they could get to it…
Step 2: Knowledge. Not so easy. Dave and his team were starting from scratch. How could they help farmers improve quality and yields? How could they compete with established players with large washing stations and deep pockets? This was to be a steep learning curve.
Step 3: Infrastructure. Spoiler alert: 10 years on, Zukuka Bora have 8 washing stations, all equipped with motorised pulpers. But starting out, it was a different matter and improvisation was the name of the game (hence the bicycle pulper)
Step 4: Market. What good is a supply chain without someone to buy your product? Enter, Commonfolk.
Commonfolk Coffee is an Australian specialty roaster and café group based on the Mornington Peninsula, just outside Melbourne. Founded in 2013, they position themselves as “quality coffee that doesn’t just taste good, but does good,” with an ethical sourcing model that includes long-term producer partnerships, fair pricing and community initiatives.
I highly recommend their documentary – Every Cup Counts about their own journey launching Zukuka Bora Coffee Company.
Getting it Done
The strategy for year one could be summarised as “figure it out as we go along”. Armed with newfound knowledge in basic coffee agronomy, the team established demo plots to train farmers in pruning, mulching and picking. That year they produced one solitary 60kg bag of coffee. It was a small harvest, but they were nevertheless very proud of their effort. After all, it wasn’t much but it was theirs. Giddy with excitement, they sent a sample to Australia, eager for feedback from the people who know their stuff.
Was it good coffee?
When the answer came back, it was a mixed reaction: “Not really”.
But it wasn’t bad, and crucially, there was potential, enough potential that Commonfolk were willing to commit to buying some next crop. Whatever the result, they were in. It takes a lot of guts to take that sort of risk, especially when you are a small quality-focussed business operating a tight budget, so hats must come off to the team at Commonfolk for taking that risk on.
Armed with one customer, a reliable partner, Zukuka Bora Coffee Company was born.
