Coffee Plantation

Coffee plantation is something unique that most people have skipped during their visit to Queen Elizabeth national park. A coffee plantation is a section of extensive farming between the game park and the farm lands within Queen Elizabeth national park. It is technically with in the buffer zone between the park and the farm lands.

The coffee plantation within Queen Elizabeth national park it is a women project owned and run by “Omwani Women’s Cooperative”. Omwani women’s cooperative is a group of women that are committed to improving the life standards of their families through the production of organic coffee beans. The coffee is grown naturally without the application of any artificial chemicals; fertilizers or pesticides.

The coffee plantation has over 1500 trees of Arabic coffee together with Robersta coffee plants. These are cared for naturally by the omwani women farmers. This also means that the land on is fertile enough to support this extremely natural and traditional farming method.

You can visit the omwani women cooperative coffee making business during your stay within Queen Elizabeth national park. You can witness the coffee beans being processed using hands at the communal coffee processing plant. You will also enjoy the sampling of the finest organic coffee bean products from this plantation. You might forget the taste of Starbucks coffee when you taste the coffee beans packed by omwani women cooperative with in Queen Elizabeth national park and this applies to all Uganda coffees.

The omwani women have learnt all the stages of coffee production at the communal plant, and they do the coffee production with all the love like their life depends on this coffee plantation. At the coffee production plant you will get the aroma of the coffee beans being roasted and made ready for packing and exporting. All the processes of making the coffee ready are done manually; from harvesting, sorting, drying, cleaning, secondary sorting, roasting to the final stage of packing.

The omwani women’s cooperative is able to produce and export a constant supply of coffee beans, both Arabic and Robasta, globally throughout the entire year. This is because Uganda receives two rain fall peaks in the year. The rainfall is supplemented with a cool equatorial climate that gives the coffee a favorable condition to grow well.

The climatic condition with in the region brings about slow ripening of the coffee for the best coffee beans. The production too is done with a lot of love from these African mothers that are committed to giving the world an unforgettable taste of Uganda through the coffee produced by these African small scale farmers.

There must be a good reason for women to pull up their efforts to something good as this plantation;

The women project of coffee production was formed to assure the members with sustainable source of income. The area is not that industrialized to provide job opportunities to women in this area, plus most of the local women have low education qualifications not enough to find them jobs within the lodges in Queen Elizabeth national park. Hence the idea of a coffee plantation folded up the misery for these poor local women.
The coffee plantation was also formed to improve the vocational skills of the women. All the women learn a lot of skills through the on job training on how to process the coffee to the finest aromatic coffee beans for export.
Most of the women in this project have HIV and have been abandoned by the men that impregnated them; therefore, this project helps them not to feel like outlanders in the community. When at work the team work connects the women together as a family thus improving their wellbeing.
The plantation is the reason as to why many of the women involved can afford to bring up their children an also support their families. From the small salary they get from the coffee production project, these single mothers can afford to buy food and also take their children to school.

The coffee plantation tour is something unique that you will love to your itinerary if you are a coffee lover. Your experience at Omwani Women Cooperation’s coffee plant will take your Ugandan coffee experience to another level.