Background

NUCAFE Grading Limited is the commercial enterprise of the National Union of Coffee Agribusinesses and Farm Enterprises Ltd (NUCAFE).

Therefore, NUCAFE is a hybrid farmer-owned social enterprise founded in 2003 having its business entity, NUCAFE Grading Limited. NUCAFE is the trademark and one of the brands used by NUCAFE Grading Limited in all its operations.

From humble beginnings in pursuit of its vision, “Coffee Farmers profitably own their coffee along the coffee value chain for sustainable livelihoods, consumer satisfaction, and societal transformation”. As a hybrid organization, NUCAFE runs a business entity for its own sustainability, and then it runs impact-oriented programs. Therefore the two business and impact entities are NUCAFE Grading Limited (NGL) and NUCAFE respectively.

A dedicated team of NUCAFE board and management is relentlessly working hard with hope for two things: scaling the potential farmer impact for membership to more than 231 farmer organizations in all the coffee growing regions of Uganda and achieving its mission which is “To establish a market-driven system of coffee farmer enterprises and organizations which are empowered to increase their family household incomes and improved livelihoods through enhanced Social entrepreneurship and innovation”.

Today, we are happy to have reached out to serve and impact over 333,000 farming households with 2,000,000 farmers who are organized in 200 associations and cooperatives countrywide. With the construction and establishment of the CAFÉ (Centre for Agribusinesses and Farmer Entrepreneurship) facility, the coffee farmer is gradually getting empowered, being dignified as he/she is able to add value to coffee and get over 250%returns on investment per kilo gram of graded coffee over dry cherries where they were operating before NUCAFE intervention.