Why Uganda’s coffee ambitions may depend on bees

Uganda’s push to dramatically increase coffee production could depend on an agricultural worker that rarely features in government plans: the bee.

The Uganda National Apiculture Development Organization (TUNADO) wants the government to recognize bees as an agricultural input, arguing that supplying farmers with fertilizers and improved seedlings will achieve only so much if crops lack the pollinators needed to produce higher yields.

“Because bees are effective and efficient pollinators of these crops, we have learned that without bees to provide these pollination services, it will be very hard for a country like Uganda to increase productivity,” TUNADO executive director Dickson Biryomumaisho said.

His argument goes beyond honey. Bees transfer pollen between flowers, enabling plants to reproduce and helping crops develop fruits and seeds. Biryomumaisho said several crops the government is promoting, including coffee, cashew, macadamia, avocado, citrus fruits, and mangoes, depend on effective pollination.

The issue is particularly significant for coffee. President Yoweri Museveni has set a target of producing 20 million bags annually, but Professor Robert Kajobe, a research professor at Muni University and TUNADO board chairperson, argues that Uganda cannot achieve that target through conventional farm inputs alone.

Kajobe said research by one of his PhD students found that pollination, particularly by bees, contributes significantly to coffee yields.

“You need 60 per cent of the yield of coffee always as a result of pollination and especially by bees,” he said.

“That one needs now deliberate effort on the pollinators and the pollinators are mostly bees.”

The proposal, raised during the Fourth Africa Region Apimondia Symposium in Uganda, would broaden how agricultural investment is understood.

Instead of focusing mainly on what farmers plant or apply to their fields, TUNADO wants government policy to recognize the ecological services that help produce those crops. Uganda already has an estimated 1.3 million beekeepers, according to Kajobe.

The challenge, he said, is turning that base into increased production and exports. But even as Uganda seeks to benefit more from bees, their habitats are coming under pressure.

Kajobe warned that clearing natural vegetation for settlements, farming and other activities is leaving bees without places to live, reducing their population. TUNADO is proposing a practical response.

Biryomumaisho wants farmers, including those who don’t keep bees commercially, to maintain a “bee reserve”— vegetation or habitat on their farms that can support pollinators.

Beekeeping can also work alongside crop production. TUNADO has promoted a system combining macadamia, coffee and bees: macadamia trees provide shade while bees pollinate both crops.

There is an economic opportunity too. Beyond honey, beekeeping produces beeswax, propolis, bee venom, royal jelly and pollen. Kajobe said Uganda is one of three African countries permitted to export honey and other bee products to the European Union, although export volumes remain relatively small.

What happens next depends largely on whether government agricultural policy begins treating pollination as part of the investment required to raise productivity.

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