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A Ugandan entrepreneur founded a company that pays a premium for coffee cherries from women farmers. The company hopes to encourage more women to get involved in the business side of coffee production.
Meridah Nandudu grew up on a coffee farm in Uganda’s eastern Sironko district, close to the Kenyan border, and observed how gender dynamics play out during the harvest season.
As Rodney Muhumuza reports for AP News, women in the region often do the bulk of the physical work of tending to the coffee plants and harvesting the cherries. However, men deliver the harvest to washing stations for processing, when money is exchanged for cherries. Nandudu explained that men don’t always return all the money they earn to their families.
“When (men) go and sell, they are not accountable. Our mothers cannot ask, ‘We don’t have food at home. You sold coffee. Can you pay school fees for this child?’” Nandudu said.
To reverse this trend, Nandudu founded Bayaaya Specialty Coffee. The company buys freshly-harvested coffee cherries directly from farmers to process and sell for export. Bayaaya pays women farmers a higher price for coffee cherries and gives them a small bonus during the off-season.
In 2022, Bayaaya worked with just a handful of producers—now they receive coffee cherries from over 600 women. One farmer, Juliet Kwaga, told Muhumuza that she had taken over coffee delivery from her husband. “At the end of the day I go home with something to feed my family, to support my children,” she said.
