Uganda coffee exports rose 3.4% and brought in 4.8% less money
More coffee left Uganda in the year to July 2026 than the year before, and less money came back.
Uganda coffee exports came to 8.2 million 60-kg bags in the twelve months to July 2026, worth $2.13 billion. A year earlier the country shipped 7.9 million bags and was paid $2.25 billion for them. More coffee left the country and less money came back.
More bags, less money
Quantity rose 3.4%. Value fell 4.8%. Uganda's coffee regulator offers two reasons in its own report and stops there: production went up, and world prices came down as Brazil and Vietnam put more coffee on the water. Coffee export earnings and export volumes are set in different places, which is why they can move in opposite directions for a full year. One is decided on a hillside. The other is decided on an exchange floor. July's global export figures showed the same split, with every arabica group down and robusta carrying the increase.
What July looked like on its own
846,376 bags left Uganda in July 2026, worth $204.1 million, at an average of $4 per kilogram. Against July 2025 that is 14.9% less coffee and 18.4% less money. July sits at the tail of the main harvest in the south west, so a thinner month is not news by itself. The distance between those two percentages is.
Robusta coffee is 92% of what ships
Of the July total, 775,148 bags were robusta and 71,228 were arabica coffee. Robusta averaged $3.8 per kilogram against $6.0 for arabica, and the highest price of the month went to a Bugisu B at $12.2. One grade, Screen 15, accounted for 425,856 bags, or 54.9% of all robusta coffee shipped. Screen 15 is sorted by bean size rather than by cup score, and it is the kind of green coffee that fills espresso blends rather than filter menus. Uganda publishes the full grade table every month.
So who is drinking it?
Europe took 62% of July's volume. Italy alone took 29.3%, ahead of Sudan at 15.1% and Germany at 10.7%. African destinations took 201,421 bags, against 158,651 a month earlier, which makes the continent the fastest-moving column in a table usually read as a European one. A public map of the coffee chain named the companies that move it. The destination list names the countries that drink it.
What is worth checking
Farm-gate prices in July averaged UGX 5,500 per kilogram for Robusta Kiboko and UGX 11,500 for FAQ. 74 companies exported that month, the top ten held 70.6% of the volume, and Sucafina was the largest foreign buyer at 13.2%. On 16 September the London robusta November position closed at $3,430 per ton and the arabica December position at 281.55 cents a pound in New York, which is where the coffee market prices the same beans a continent later. Coffee export earnings reach a shelf slowly, if at all. The figure for what a producing country shipped and what it was paid arrives every month, in public, long before any of it reaches a bag.
Drink the coffee behind the writing
Freshly roasted, delivered to your door, with a fair deal behind every bag.
