By KT Reporter
The association of religious leaders in the greater Masaka sub-region has undertaken a vigorous campaign to boost coffee production and value addition as part of their joint strategies to improve the livelihoods of their congregations.
The joint campaign aims to leverage the available land resource and established community networks and structures to make a serious contribution to the coffee production sector and benefit from the vast economic opportunities within its value chain.
Doctor Leonard Sserwadda, the Greater Masaka Regional Overseer of the Pentecostal pastors under the National Fellowship of Born Again Churches, says the campaign arose during their regional Inter-Religious Council symposium, in which they deliberated strategies to improve the livelihoods of priests and their followers in the area.
He indicates that despite their apparent religious diversities, they agreed to use their respective pulpits to mobilise communities to embrace commercial farming, with their main focus put on increasing coffee production to fight poverty.
The campaign, according to him, is going to include distributing improved varieties of seedlings, establishing community demonstration farms, integrating the routine spiritual sermons with proper guidance, among other things, all aimed at energising the farmers to improve their production capacities.
He adds that they have also started on the journey of establishing partnerships with the government’s agriculture-related agencies that include Operation Wealth Creation (OWC) and the Ministry of Agriculture, to help them address the underlying structural challenges that frustrate the ordinary coffee farmers.
On the other hand, Sserwadda indicates that they also set out to counteract wasteful expenditures by some coffee farmers, arguing that the habit was also identified as another serious impediment to household livelihood improvement and community transformation.
To reinforce the campaign for its long-term sustainability, Bishop Sserwadda reveals that they have already engaged the Coordinator of Operation Wealth Creation, General Salim Saleh Akandwanaho, who agreed to support them with modern coffee hullers and grading factories in the area.
He indicated that they also resolved to form and register a regional interdenominational coffee farmers and processors Cooperative Union, which will harness their aspirations.
Reverend Canon Enoch Muwanguzi, the Spokesperson of West Buganda Anglican Diocese, is optimistic about the campaign’s success, saying it comes at a time when communities are already positive towards coffee farming.
In 2022, the Synod of West Buganda Diocese, which is the highest decision-making organ of the diocese, resolved to enforce mandatory growing of coffee in all parishes within its jurisdiction, which stretches across eight districts.
The idea was adopted and made it compulsory for all Churches to have a coffee plantation on their land, as an income-generating project for the priest and to act as a demonstration for the laity.
Similarly, the Catholic Bishop of Masaka Diocese, Serverus Jjumba is also undertaking serious efforts to revive Bwavumpologoma Coffee Farmers’ Cooperative Society, which was so prominent in the economic empowerment of the faith in the area between the early 1960s and 1980s.
-URN. Give us feedback on this story through our email: kamwokyatimes@gmail.com
