How A Sisterhood Of Ugandan Women Are Transforming The Coffee Industry – CoffeeTalk

Meridah Nandudu, a Ugandan coffee producer, has launched a coffee sisterhood called Bayaaya Specialty Coffee, which aims to reverse the imbalance in labor and financial control in the coffee industry. Nandudu’s business group now includes over 600 women, up from dozens in 2022, making up about 75% of her registered farmers in the mountainous area of eastern Uganda that produces prized arabica beans and sells to exporters.

Traditionally, women have done the hard work but have not had control of the money. Nandudu’s goal is to reverse this imbalance in labor and financial control in a business that can’t run without women. Uganda is the second highest coffee producer in Africa, after Ethiopia, and the country exported more than 6 million bags of coffee between September 2023 and August 2024, accounting for $1.3 billion in earnings. The earnings have been rising as production has been dwindling in Brazil, which is the world’s top coffee producer, due to unfavourable drought conditions.

Nandudu grew up in Sironko district, a remote village near the Kenya border where coffee is the community’s lifeblood. As a child, she helped her mother and other women look after acres of coffee plants, weeding and labouring with the pulping, fermenting, washing, and drying the coffee. According to Nandudu, the harvest season was known to coincide with a surge in cases of domestic violence, as couples fought over how much of the earnings men brought home from sales — and how much they didn’t.

To address this issue, Nandudu introduced a strategy where a woman’s coffee was fetching a slightly higher price than that of a man. This was particularly 200 shillings, if a woman delivered coffee, it would earn that family 200 shillings plus on a kilo, so that motivated the men to trust their women to sell the coffee. When the women sell the coffee, she has a hand in it, she knows how much we have sold this coffee, and when they come back at home they are able to sit and are able to discuss. So, through this, we have witnessed low reduction levels of gender-based violence in our communities and then the women have been empowered,” says Nandudu.

Nandudu earned her degree in social sciences from Uganda’s top public university in 2015, with her father funding her education from coffee earnings. She wanted to launch a company that would prioritize the needs of coffee-producing women in the country’s conservative society. She thought of her project as a kind of sisterhood and chose “Bayaaya” — which translates as brotherhood or sisterhood in the Lumasaba language — for her company’s name.

For small-holder Ugandan farmers in remote areas, a small movement in the price of a kilogram of coffee is a major event. The decision to sell to one or another middleman often hinges on small price differences. Nandudu adds an extra 200 shillings to the price of every kilogram she buys from a woman, which is enough of an incentive for more women to join the company. Another benefit is a small bonus payment during the off-season from February to August.

Nandudu believes that it is important for women to be engaged in the coffee value chain, as traditionally, women are caretakers and managers. She believes that the coffee production is changing her life around, providing her with independence and the ability to take care of her children.

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