Uganda is part of Africa's Great Lakes region. Divided into 4 major geographical regions and 6 traditional Bantu kingdoms, this country has one foot rooted in strong tradition and the other moving towards renewal.

The main export is coffee, which is why our partner Great Lakes Coffee, with whom we work in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has developed its activities on the other side of the border.

In the east of the country, Great Lakes Coffee produces washed coffees in the Mount Elgon area, and in the west, natural coffee in the Rwenzori mountain range. It was in the latter region that their sustainability program behind this certification came into being in 2018.

The aim of Great Lakes Coffee is to produce 100% traceable, quality coffee that is profitable for farmers.

To achieve this, agricultural equipment is made available to farmers who join the program. This considerably improves their farming practices, yields and, consequently, coffee quality.

When you increase the yield and quality of a coffee, you automatically increase its profitability. With a transparent approach and the creation of added value, the income paid to farmers increases and so does their standard of living.

To achieve this, they have set up a pyramid system piloted by 50 agricultural engineers who share their knowledge with over 700 leading farmers who have a pilot farm among their 25,000 member farmers.

Each pilot farm becomes a place for training and sharing farming practices with surrounding farmers. One of the key points of this concept is choosing the right lead farmer.

It's not necessarily the size of the farm or its productivity that counts, but rather the farmer's personality. He or she must be well integrated into the community, as not all farmers speak Swahili. Above all, he or she must be a good teacher, as he or she is a vehicle for transmission.

With over 25,000 farmer members, traceability is more than a challenge! To collect this incredible mass of information, Great Lake Coffee has developed an application so that each engineer can record the data collected during his or her field visits. It offers a truly comprehensive assessment of each farmer's social situation!

Information includes :

• information on the farmer and his family
• the number of hectares of coffee grown
• the number of hectares devoted to other crops, such as bananas
• the yield and income generated by each crop
• number of goats and cows
• training courses taken or not taken...)

These data enable the exact traceability of each batch collected. From terroir to microlot, customers can select a cup profile or isolate a particular farmer's batch.

It's also a fantastic social support tool for each farmer, enabling them to ask themselves the right questions: are their incomes diversified enough? Could he try his hand at other crops?

Great Lake Coffee would like to turn this program into a certification. This makes sense, because all certifications linked to coffee production or any other agricultural production are made by consumer countries, not producer countries. They are therefore based on consumer expectations and not on the difficulties encountered by farmers.

If consumers were more aware of production issues, they might look for fairer certification in the producer-consumer balance.

The aim of this certification, the first to be created in a producer country, is to positively shake up the industry by starting from the bottom, with the farmers' standard of living. And no longer based on consumer expectations, which are sometimes at odds with the original reality.

Leslie Laborde, Marketing Manager