One Entrepreneur's Journey To Challenging Sexism In The Coffee Industry – CoffeeTalk

In Uganda, coffee is often seen as a man’s thing, including growing, selling, and even drinking it. However, one woman, Meridah Nandudu, has challenged this status quo by starting her own coffee company, Bayaaya, which means sisterhood. She grew up in a village where her parents and grandparents were coffee farmers. Meridah’s love for the land shines through as she walks under branches full of small, green fruit that turn red as they ripen.

However, her memories of her childhood are tainted by the violence she saw the women in her community suffer, especially during harvest season when couples would argue over money. Her mother told her that if the women had their own money, they would have options to escape difficult situations, like a violent husband. So, Meridah made it a goal to figure out how to help, but she never thought coffee would be the answer.

As an adult, Meridah’s life took unexpected turns. At 35 years old, she built her own business, Bayaaya, which means sisterhood. The path to get here was not an easy one. Meridah’s personal story is one of the things that has pushed her so much. She eventually left her village to go to college and then grad school, got married, and had two kids. As the years went by, she found herself trapped, like many of the women in her village. Her husband was controlling and wouldn’t allow her to work. Five years into their marriage, he suddenly left. Not long after, as she was sitting home one day, exhausted, with no money, no job, destitute, and crying, she had an epiphany.

Nandudu has been able to go to the best universities in the country and have the knowledge and skills. She decided to go back to her village and try to build a coffee business. She drives from the village to the Bayaaya coffee warehouse in Mbale in eastern Uganda, where Meridah and her employees turn the dried coffee she buys from farmers into green coffee that will be sold to roasters.

In her office, Meridah brews medium roast coffee, which she believes brings out all the attributes in coffee, such as caramels, body of the coffee, and chocolate flavors. When she first started her business, she realized there was a lot she didn’t know.

Meridah Tanis, a Ugandan coffee farmer, began making mistakes that cost her a lot of money. She decided to learn how to avoid them and found a program funded by the Netherlands that offered business training to young entrepreneurs in Uganda. After three months, she learned how to run a coffee business and make money from it.

Nandudu saw that coffee can change a woman’s life and the lives of the community. She started preaching a coffee gospel to the women, teaching them how to grow a higher-quality crop. However, she encountered resistance from the men in the village, who wouldn’t allow their wives to sell the coffee at all.

Meridah came up with a plan to get money into the hands of the women by offering an incentive of an extra 200 Ugandan shillings per kilo of coffee beans if their wives could sell directly to her. Slowly, the men agreed. Five years later, Meridah now buys from over 600 women farmers and has won awards and been featured in local news. Jackie Aldrette, with AVSI, the organization that provided Meridah’s training, says Meridah’s success is an inspiration to others who have grown up with limited resources.

Juliet Kwaga, a 31-year-old with three kids, was one of the first farmers who sold her beans to Meridah. She learned how to use manure in her farm and used to have to ask her husband for money for the most basic needs, like buying soap or paying school fees for her children. Now, she can take her child to school without overdepending on her husband.

For Meridah, the dream is only just beginning. She wants to roast her own coffee and export it too. For now, she’s proud of Juliet and the many other women like her who are earning their own money and taking control of their lives.

Nandudu believes that even if a man walked away, she wouldn’t be bothered because she knows she can take care of her children, even without him.

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