microstations meet Uganda

In 2018, when Andy, Aggrey, and Jason started Zombo Coffee Partners Ltd, they envisioned a future that offered a solution for the three main problems farmers face in the Zombo region: lack of infrastructure, poor quality, and no access to the market. Andy, the founder and designer of the micro-station model and of Zombo, thought a future in which farmers become independent is possible. He has been working to prove this since.

By offering an above-market cherry price to farmers and paying a bonus for quality, c-price freedom can be achieved; by providing technical and processing assistance, quality can get better and stabilize. Andy Carlton's strategic system has helped farmers over the past years to improve the quality and consistency of their coffee; together with his long-term business partner Aggrey, they've been supporting farmers to become economic actors in their own right by owning and running the micro stations. Livelihood in this neglected region of the world is beginning to improve, and farmers are now projecting a future for their children's education.

Zombo operates in one of the country's poorest regions in the West Nile. The farmers, mostly Alur people, grow most of their own food and have a hundred coffee trees in their fields. Before Zombo, however, coffee was something like a cash machine for most farmers. They still needed to see what improving quality could offer them. Or, as Aggrey puts it: "Farmers used to look at coffee as something falling from their trees. They used to only look at coffee when the season came."

Over the past years, results have started to spread and manifest. Zombo has managed an exponential price increase and solid growth. But, sadly, large exporters are all too aware of this situation, and when they heard that Zombo was paying higher prices and making farmers co-owners of their company, they decided to outbid them. What will happen when they force Zombo to close down? They can return to their usual practice of squeezing farmers with shamefully low prices and no competition.

Our job, and that of the partners we introduced to Zombo, is to not let that happen…

DescripUganda is already well-known for excellent robusta coffee.  In recent years Uganda has begun to build a second reputation, as an origin of fine arabica coffees.  Fertile land, volcanic soils, plentiful rainfall and sunshine, good varietals, diverse pockets of suitable micro-climates and altitudes, all combine with improved production practices to contribute to this emerging origin of really tasty specialty coffees.
The Zombo region, the Alur Highlands, is for most coffee people a blind spot on the map. It is located on the western banks of the Nile, the river that leaves Lake Albert and starts its long, meandering journey to the Mediterranean.  On this hilly plateau, the Alur people speak a Nilotic language which is not related to the majority Bantu languages of sub-Saharan Africa.  They have strong cross-border family relationships in DR Congo, next door.
Zombo Coffee Partners is pioneering an innovative business model, a unique African hybrid that combines a private shareholder company with a group of smallholder cooperatives by offering the coops shares in the company.  Zombo works in close partnership with the coops, helping their members to add value by improving quality, and sharing profits with them when we sell their coffee, all with a mindset and focus of full price transparency and open book keeping.  Next to all this, Zombo has a strong focus on helping the farmers to break free of the C-price trap for coffee as a commodity, a mission that lies very close to the heart of This Side Up.
This is the original document Andy wrote in 2016 about how the microstation concept developed. tion text goes here

These are the microstations Zombo brought together for the 2023-2024 harvest.

We work with all microstations that Zombo works with.Also, we buy a lot called “Jukia Hill”,
this is the coffee from farmers close to Zombo’s dry processing plant, Jukia Park.

farmers: 85
trees: 39.515

farmers: 154
trees: 46. 508

farmers: 116
trees: 53.739

farmers: 85
trees: 24.940

farmers: 273
trees: 82.446

farmers: 90
trees: 20.245

farmers: 150
trees: 39.000

(50 are women)

farmers: 109
trees: 43.884

(49 are woman)

Currently Zombo Coffee Partners do the dry milling and export. The dry mill is located on Jukia Hill. Since last year they have also been buying from the surrounding farmers - who live directly next to the mill - and are conducting experiments with fermentation in the building (large barn) of the mill itself.

farmers: 47
trees: 18.808

Zombo operates unlike any other value chain we work in. Not only do the farmers own the microstations themselves (not indirectly through a cooperative) but Zombo as an exporting entity is 25% farmer-owned. They outsource dry milling capacity to a third party miller in Kampala.

Traceability

You can find all the signed contracts and shipping documents that we made with Zombo since 2021 below (Google Drive).

Contracts and shipping documents Zomb0

2018: Became friends with Aggrey and Andy of Zombo Coffee Partners within weeks of their company starting.

2019: Bought our first Zombo specialty coffee, from micromills Ajere (then called “Atyenda”) and Culamuk.

2020: Started discussing the C-Price Freedom concept – getting away from New York’s mad roller-coaster. This Side Up worked with four microstations, being Culamuk, Ajere, Gonyobendo and Ndhew. Next to these “single microstation coffees”, the peaberry was a blend of six microstations, the other two being Ayaka and Ambe.

2021: Zombo paid a floor price of 60 USD cents per kg of fresh cherry for the first time. thanks to the support from two donors, The Royal Dutch Embassy in Kampala and Irish Aid, channeled via Oxfam Uganda, two new farmer groups were created this year: Mitapila and Ayanyonga. Their coffees came with amazing results: Mitapila stood out with scores around 86 for both the fully-washed and the women’s natural coffees. Ayanyonga’s scores were only slightly below, around 85

2022: Farmers were paid the highest prices ever for their fresh cherry – we visited some of the coffee microstations.

2023: The Futureproof Coffee Uganda project started – bringing regenerative agriculture to the Ugandan north-west, courtesy of This Side Up customer Wakuli and the Dutch government.

Andy Carlton

Email: andy@zombocoffee.com

Phone: +256 787 251280

Ovuru Village, Paidha, Zombo District, Uganda

sell together, grow together - coffee through community

Ambe microstation was built in 2019 when the farmers wanted to come together so they can have greater access to the market. Their partnership with Zombo made it easier for them to access this market information.

Ambe microstation has different pillars that strength their vision. At a household level, they want to use the income from coffee to send their children to school. They want to learn more about rest of the value chain in great detail. Working together has improved their morale and it has other advantages such as saving schemes, more participation from women in the community. They believe they can reap the benefits of these initiatives by sticking together as a collective. Zombo's community based consultants have been supporting the microstation through training and capacity building.

This group also faces it's challenges together. One of the key issues in this locale is the lack of fences and not having enough financial resources to buy and build them. This triggers intruders to steal the coffee from storage which is a major threat especially with limited yield due to extreme weather change. They also lack good pruning equipment which slows them down. All these challenges are connected directly to the lack of finance during the off season that limit the group from making infrastructure improvements.

Despite these obstacles, their love for coffee has inspired them to keep growing this crop. Thanks to income from coffee, their children can attend school. It has enabled them to by land, food. They also love drinking coffee which continues to spark the interest for them to grow it.

CULTIVARS

Most of the coffee grown in the Alur Highlands of north-west Uganda is SL14, a variety developed by Scott Laboratories in Kenya and promoted by the Uganda Coffee Development Authority. There is also some Bourbon, which comes from nearby DR Congo, where it dominates.

elevation

1480 meters

NOTABLE

This group encourages women to produce coffees and is complimented by the trainings regarding various aspects of gender dynamics in the coffee value chain by Vivian and her team as part of the future proof coffee collective.

PROCESSING

After harvesting, farmers take their coffee to the nearby microstation, which produces fully washed coffee. Hand sorting is done immediately to select the best quality cherries. Once the hand sorting of green, overripe, and diseased cherries is completed, the quality executives at each microstation are allowed to proceed with floating to ensure they obtain the best quality red ripe cherries.
The red ripe cherries are then taken to the pulping machine to remove the red skin and transform them into parchment. The beans are carefully placed in fermenting containers or buckets filled with water, where they undergo a fermentation process for 24 to 36 hours to remove the sticky mucilage. After fermentation, the beans are washed thoroughly with more water.
The executive team conducts a second round of hand sorting to remove beans damaged during the pulping process. The wet, high-quality beans are then transferred to a drying table, shade, or tarpaulin for proper drying until they reach the required moisture level of 12% to 13%, which qualifies them as good parchment. The hulling of parchment to obtain green beans is carried out at the ZCP factory.

TASTIFY™ CUPPING NOTES

*Browse through our Tastify Archives on Google Drive.*

The price you pay for Ambe microstation's fully washed coffee p/kg. We agreed on this price directly with the farmers, disregarding the volatile US Coffee C price.
The microstation buys red cherries from the farmers. They process it and then send the dry coffee (in parchment form) to Zombo for final milling, sorting for it to be made to export grade. Farm gate in this case includes price paid to the farmer and the primary processing done by the microstation.
Zombo mills the coffee at Jukia hill and then sorts it to export grade. Further, they are also responsible for all the processes involved in exporting the coffee from Uganda to the Netherlands.
International shipping from Nebbi (Port of loading - Mombasa, Kenya) to Rotterdam, Netherlands. It is inclusive of freight, customs, insurance and warehousing costs.
Average financing cost owed to (mostly social) lenders. This ensures immediate payment to the farmers when the coffee leaves the farm or port.
A standard TSU premium on all coffees designated exclusively to accelerate farmers’ own regenerative agriculture project. Another € 0.06 is included in the final price as part of the basic income project being carried out at Zombo coffee partners in cooperation with Eight Network and This Side Up. Read more about this project here
This Side Up compensation for spending time and resources importing this coffee. Our work includes year-round contact with producers, managing export, shipping, import, warehousing, grading, sampling, finding and keeping roasting partners for Zombo. € 1,65 is This Side Up’s Model 1 markup. For a full overview of our modular margin construction, see the Trade Models page

Photo gallery

You may use these images freely to promote Ambe’s coffee amongst your customers.

COOPERATION IS THE PATH TO COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT

Ayaka microstation came together to experience cooperation and benefit from communal development. This microstation was built in 2019 and renovated again in 2023. The vision of this group is to foster learning and development for their farmers in good agricultural practices. They aspire to be leading producers within their region. One of the major challenges faced by this group is lack of electricity. This inconsistent power supply leads to less security and theft of coffee from their warehouse. Even through these adversities, they continue being motivated to stay as a group so they can achieve their common goals. This encourages them to work together and creates an upward cycle of motivation to try again. For them coffee is cash crop and their main source of income. Other than economic reasons, they also grow coffee for their domestic consumption.