By Herbert Musoke
With the aroma of coffee wafting through the air, the 2025 Harvest Money Expo was officially launched yesterday (Tuesday, February 04) at the National Union of Coffee Agribusiness and Farm Enterprises (NUCAFE) coffee processing facility in Namanve, Mukono district.
Speaker after speaker emphasised the countless opportunities that this annual event offers the agricultural community in Uganda, including networking, co-operating, markets, eased financing and genuine farm inputs.
The Harvest Money Expo is organised by Vision Group with sponsorship from the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Uganda, Engineering Solutions Limited, K-Roma (Bella Wine), Tunga Nutrition, Uganda Development Co-operation, ABi and Pepsi Cola.
The organising team assured Ugandans that all is set for the expo.
The ninth edition of the expo is scheduled for February 14-16 at Mandela National Stadium, Namboole, with both local and international companies set to exhibit, share technologies and knowledge, as well as sell their products at a discounted price.
During the launch, former finance minister Gerald Ssendaula commended Vision Group for organising the expo, which has encouraged value addition and co-operation among farmers as a way of promoting farming as a business.
Ssendaula is also the board chair of NUCAFE.
“We realised that before the formation of NUCAFE, individual farmers were being cheated by middlemen by paying them very little money, as farmers would reach a point of selling their coffee at flowering stage to sort their problems,” he said.
However, after starting to work together, farmers are being paid reasonable prices for their coffee since their members, who are over two million coffee farmers, can only sell processed coffee, which has increased their incomes by about 250%.
Ssendaula appreciated the theme of this year’s expo of Farming as a Business, Value Addition and Co-operatives, which he said is in line with the Government’s efforts of transforming agriculture from peasantry to commercial agriculture.
“Through working together, we are now exporting coffee to European and Asian countries and we are looking forward to partnering with local and international companies and agencies to further coffee farming that will see the two million coffee farmers brought to the money economy,” he said.
Don Wanyama, the Vision Group chief executive officer, said the media company decided to promote co-operatives after realising that people who work together achieve much more than those who work in isolation.
“It is not by coincidence that we are launching the expo here at NUCAFE, but they are our overall winners of last year’s Best Farmers Competition – Special Category of Co-operatives. This is a way of encouraging farmers to work in groups,” he said.
Wanyama thanked the expo sponsors who have continued to make the annual event possible and assured all farmers and those in the agriculture value chain not to miss out as everything is set to be showcased during the three days.
He said the expo is the largest and most organised farming exhibition in Uganda.
“We expect the numbers of visitors to go up. But as exhibitors, remember that what you get from this are not just numbers, but genuine farmers and potential buyers of your products. When they visit your tents, make sure you have the right information for them. I advise that you have lots of business cards and brochures because from experience, stalls tend to run out of giveaway information on the first or second day,” Wanyama said.
Frank Buizer, the agriculture counsellor at the Netherlands Embassy, who represented Ambassador Frederieke Quispel, applauded Vision Group for the Best Farmers Competition and expo, which have done a tremendous work of disseminating information to local farmers.
“We, as the embassy, are happy to be part of the Best Farmers Competition and the Harvest Money Expo, which have changed many lives in Uganda by increasing incomes in households by changing the way they manage their farms,” Buizer said.
He said over 100 companies have confirmed to attend the Harvest Money Expo in the Dutch village. These are local companies having co-operation with Dutch companies, Dutch companies and the Best Farmers Competition winners, who will share knowledge and technologies.
“The expo presents opportunities to farmers to access financial literacy, technologies, innovations and ideas. Therefore, anyone with a business in the agricultural sector should not miss the expo,” Buizer said.
The entry fee to the expo is sh10,000 per person, and to attend the training sessions, you pay additional sh10,000 per day. Gates will be open by 8:00am, starting on February 14.
