Uganda’s Tea Export Strategy Lies in Increasing Output and Improving Quality

Tea is an important export commodity for Uganda. Increasing its output and quality remains at the heart of increasing Uganda’s tea export competitiveness. However, increased export competitiveness hasn’t been achieved due to a number of reasons, some of which are cost of production, limited research, inadequate processing facilities, barriers to land acquisition and poor farmer organization. This is especially true with smallholder farmers who do not have access to some of the resources that estates farmers do. A study by Munyambonera et. al. (2014)1 using data from the International Tea Committee (2012) provide lessons to Uganda on how Kenya increased its export value and volume through increasing of output and improving of quality