International Trade Centre 66d ago

On the slopes of Uganda's Mount Elgon, coffee has always been grown with care. But for years, the farmers who produced it, and the company that championed them, were dismissed as too risky, too remote, and too unknown to attract serious investment. Mountain Harvest, a social enterprise and coffee company in Uganda, refused to accept this verdict. By building rigorous due diligence systems, forging relationships with international buyers and placing smallholder farmers at the centre of every decision, the cooperative turned scepticism into evidence, and evidence into capital. Here, Managing Director Kenneth Barigye shares how Uganda's most ambitious coffee enterprise went from running at a loss to securing $2.5 million in investment, and what it means for the 2,250 farmers whose futures depend on getting it right. ITC’s work with Mountain Harvest is happening under the CLEAR Supply Chains project, the "Ending child labour in supply chains: Addressing the root causes of child labour in supply chains through an area-based approach", funded by the European Union, brings together the International Trade Centre (ITC), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the International Trade Centre (ITC) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to address jointly the root causes of child labour, with a primarily focus on the coffee supply chain. Mountain Harvest has also been part of the UK Trade Partnerships (UKTP) programme and has benefited greatly from their interventions. For instance, their participation at the Madrid, London and Manchester coffee festivals in 2025 and early 2026 were all facilitated by UKTP.