Author: admin

Saving Uganda’s Mountain Gorilla’s Through Coffee

admin
Friday, 25 January, 2019, Coffee Magazine

When Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka established Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH), an award-winning NGO and non-profit, she had no idea that she would end up working in coffee. CTPH’s work in gorilla and wildlife conservation focused on preventing and controlling disease transmission between humans and gorillas in and around Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda by improving the health and livelihoods of local communities, who were depending on the gorillas’ habitat to meet their basic needs. Land encroachment, competition for food, and the spread of disease all threatened the survival of the critically endangered mountain gorilla.

In 2015, CTPH established a program called Gorilla Conservation Coffee, intending to improve the livelihood of the surrounding community by assisting them in getting international market prices for their Arabica coffee crop and training them in sustainable coffee farming. We chatted to Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka to find out more about Gorilla Conservation Coffee and her work…

What is the story behind Gorilla Conservation Coffee? How did it all come about? 

Gorilla Conservation Coffee is a social enterprise of Conservation Through Public Health, an award-winning NGO and non-profit. Gorilla Conservation Coffee promotes biodiversity conservation by enabling coffee farmers living around protected areas with gorillas to have a viable livelihood through access to markets, where we buy their quality coffee at a premium price, which in turn reduces their need to enter the forest for food and firewood, decreasing threats to gorillas and their habitats. Furthermore, for every roasted and packaged bag of coffee sold, a donation is given to support Conservation Through Public Health’s  community health, gorilla health and conservation education programs enabling sustainable financing for conservation.

Gorilla Conservation Coffee came about when we realized that coffee farmers around Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, home to the endangered mountain gorillas, were not getting a fair price for their coffee, leading them to depend on the gorillas’ habitat to meet their basic needs to feed their families. Supporting the coffee farmers fitted within CTPH’s three integrated programs: wildlife health and conservation, community health and alternative livelihoods.

How does Gorilla Conservation Coffee help conserve the mountain gorillas? Why are they at risk?

Gorilla Conservation Coffee helps to preserve the endangered mountain gorillas by providing sustainable financing for their protection by giving farmers a viable alternative livelihood through coffee farming that takes the pressure off the gorillas and their habitats, and where a donation from sales of every coffee bag goes to support community health, gorilla health and conservation programs at Bwindi, which are preventing disease transmission between people and gorillas.

Why get into coffee? Have you always been passionate about both gorillas and coffee?

I have always been passionate about mountain gorillas, since working with them as a veterinary student in 1994 where I conducted research on parasites in the gorillas and then later started the veterinary unit at the Uganda Wildlife Authority in 1996, where I led a team that investigated the first scabies skin disease outbreak in the gorillas that was traced to people living around Bwindi Impenetrable National Park with limited access to basic health services. This led us to establish Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH) to address the health needs of people and gorillas together. As part of CTPH’s alternative livelihoods program, we decided to help coffee farmers to enable them to also benefit from living close to the gorillas, as not all people can be directly employed in the tourism industry.

How is Gorilla Conservation Coffee helping to support coffee farmers?

We work with farmers from the Bwindi Coffee Growers Cooperative that we helped to create from Arabica coffee farmers found in subcounties bordering Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. By giving them a premium price of $0.5 per kilogram of green beans above the market price, we are helping to ensure a good price and steady market for their quality coffee, enabling them to double their income and bring them closer to livable income levels.

Tell us about your Coffee Safaris?

Our Coffee Safaris are closely linked to the gorilla tourism industry where after tracking the mountain gorillas, tourists can spend an extra day visiting smallholder coffee farmers where they can get to meet the farmers, and participate in harvesting red cherries from the trees, and see how they are processed with a hand pulper to parchment. Then they get to drink freshly prepared Gorilla Conservation Coffee while getting a presentation of how drinking this coffee is helping to save gorillas.

What is your vision for Gorilla Conservation Coffee?

My vision is for Gorilla Conservation Coffee to be able to train and buy coffee from as many farmers as possible in subcounties bordering Bwindi, and later scale up to other protected areas were gorillas are found to bring similar benefits.

What has been the highlight of your journey with Gorilla Conservation Coffee, or your favourite moments?

The highlight of my journey has been discovering that Gorilla Conservation Coffee from the Bwindi farmers is actually of a very high quality and people really like drinking it because this is the first step to making sure that it will save gorillas one sip at a time. Gorilla Conservation Coffee was among the top 30 coffees that were cupped by Coffee Review in USA in 2018,  https://www.coffeereview.com/review/kanyonyi-coffee-blend/  When people visit our Gorilla Conservation Café in Entebbe, it is encouraging to hear them say that the coffee tastes very good and they are happy to be supporting the Bwindi coffee farmers and gorillas. It is also nice that the coffee farmers appreciate that we are helping them to improve on their coffee quality and yield and giving them a steady market for their coffee.

Are there any special or unique challenges you’ve encountered or overcome?

We have encountered challenges of running out of working capital because the demand for Gorilla Conservation coffee has exceeded the supply. This has also resulted in farmers who we trained in sustainable agricultural practices selling coffee to others because we are not able to buy all their coffee, yet we need it to satisfy the demand for the coffee.  Another unique challenge is differentiating Gorilla Conservation Coffee from other coffees that are branded with gorillas, but don’t have the same unique selling proposition.

What does your average day look like?

I don’t have a typical day, I work most of the time, but try to get time off to relax and be with my family. When I am in the field working with gorillas and other wildlife, I tend to start the day earlier, than when I have meetings, reports and proposals to write. I also travel to raise awareness and funds to support our work.

You established Conservation Through Public Health and Gorilla Conservation Coffee, and have achieved so much – what keeps you motivated through it all?

I remain motivated when I see how the local communities’ attitudes and lives are improving as a result of our programs, and how this is contributing to an increase in the mountain gorilla population. In November 2018, the mountain gorilla population was moved from critically endangered to endangered because of this positive trend.

What do you want the rest of the world to know about Uganda, and specifically Bwindi Impenetrable National Park?

Uganda has some of the most amazing wildlife, as well as a culture of hospitality, and is most famous for coffee and gorillas. Bwindi Impenetrable National Park also has one of the most interesting and successful models of engaging the local communities in ecotourism and conservation.

What’s next? What are you most looking forward to over the next few months and years?

We are looking forward to greatly increasing the impact of Gorilla Conservation Coffee by increasing the number of coffee farmers we are working with at Bwindi, having tested the model with the first 75 farmers. This also means greatly increasing the customers in Uganda and internationally especially in the countries where we have trademarks for Gorilla Conservation Coffee. We also want to strengthen the mechanisms for monitoring and evaluating how our impact enterprise is enabling the farmers’ income to increase, and conservation practices to improve including planting shade trees and reducing their dependence on the gorillas’ habitat for food and fuel wood.

Gorilla Conservation Coffee Ranks Top 30 in Coffee Review’s List 2018

admin

We are pleased to announce that Gorilla Conservation Coffee‘s #KanyonyiCoffeeBlend was the No. 29 coffee on Coffee Review’s list of the Top 30 Coffees of 2018.

Shop Gorilla Conservation Coffee: bit.ly/2m7vpSm 
Visit Gorilla Conservation Café: https://bit.ly/2Mb8Awc

Gorilla Conservation Coffee – Kanyonyi Coffee Blend

Location: Entebbe, Uganda

Origin: Buhoma, southwest Uganda

Roast: Medium

Est. Price: $17.95/16 ounces

Review Date: October 2018

Agtron: 47/69

Aroma: 9

Acidity/Structure: 8

Body: 8

Flavor: 9

Aftertaste: 8

Blind Assessment:

Richly sweet, chocolaty. Dark chocolate, caramel, date, gardenia, cedar in aroma and cup. Deeply sweet structure with round, gentle acidity; velvety mouthfeel. The chocolate-toned finish leads with notes of date and caramel in the short and cedar and gardenia in the long.

Notes:

This exceptional coffee was selected as the No. 29 coffee on Coffee Review’s list of the Top 30 Coffees of 2018. Kanyonyi Coffee Blend is named after the former lead silverback gorilla of Mubare Gorilla Group, the first group habituated for tourism at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda. Gorilla Conservation Coffee pays a premium of $0.50 per kilo above the market price to coffee farmers living close to the gorillas around Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, as well as supporting them with training in sustainable coffee farming and processing. Additionally, for each kilo of roasted coffee sold, $1.50 goes directly toward work to preserve mountain gorillas. Visit https://gorillaconservationcoffee.org/ for more information.

The Bottom Line: The sale of this impressively chocolaty and floral Uganda cup provides multifaceted support aimed at preserving mountain gorillas in their human and natural environment.

How Coffee Farming is Saving Mountain Gorillas in Uganda

admin

By  Posted on 17 Nov 2017

Over the years gorillas have continued to face the risk of habitat loss and poaching. Dr. Gladys Kalema- Zikusoka, founder of Gorilla Conservation Coffee, is at the forefront to ensure that these world’s largest and highly charismatic primates remain protected. She has collaborated with the coffee farmers in the dense rain-forests stretching across the southwest border of Uganda where an estimated half of the 880 mountain gorillas live today.

It is almost impossible for one to use “coffee” and “gorilla” in the same sentence. We meet Dr. Gladys Kalema – Zikusoka who is bringing these two unrelated words together to impact lives. Founded in October 2015, Gorilla Conservation Coffee is a social enterprise that improves the lives of farmers living around national parks by training them on how to grow and process good quality coffee, while paying them premium prices to improve their livelihoods. This stops the farmers from poaching and collecting firewood from the forest to make ends meet. Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka shared with us that she gained the confidence to start Gorilla Conservation Coffee after she received training through a programme known as Impact Investment for Conservation that was ran by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Switzerland. She received a loan from WWF CH which helped her begin the business. Gorilla Conservation Coffee was set up to also create sustainable financing for conservation to support conservation efforts on the ground in a holistic way without entirely depending on grants.

Dr. Gladys Kalema- Zikusoka (centre) with some of the coffee farmers

Working with gorillas is not a new thing to Dr. Gladys Kalema. She has worked with them for 20 years. She started working with them while she was still a student and later when she became the first veterinary doctor in Uganda Wildlife Authority. During one of her visits to Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, she realised that gorillas were falling sick and eventually dying. The gorilla’s health deterioration was mainly caused by the communities living adjacent to the forest. The gorillas would go into people’s gardens to feed on banana stems and in the process, accidentally touch scarecrows with dirty clothing in the gardens meant to drive away wild animals and birds. This experience steered Dr. Gladys Kalema to establish an NGO known as Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH). The NGO was meant to reduce disease spread between the community and the gorillas. While working on improving the health of the community and gorillas, it dawned on Dr. Gladys Kalema that the community was unhealthy because they were poor. They didn’t receive sustainable income from the coffee they sold leading them to engage in alternative and illegal forms of income generation; poaching and cutting trees for firewood. The concept of Gorilla Conservation Coffee was at this point birthed to provide an alternative way of improving the community’s livelihood while saving the gorillas.

“Gorilla Conservation Coffee is the only Ugandan coffee expressly created to help conserve the mountain gorillas by directly supporting farmers living around the gorillas’ habitat.”

The main market for Gorilla Conservation Coffee is comprised of; tourists, lodges, expatriates in Uganda, people abroad who want to give back, people interested in gorilla conservation, duty-free shops where people can buy souvenirs and gift shops in Uganda. Part of the donation from every branded coffee bag sold, goes to Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH) which runs 3 programmes; wildlife health and conservation, community health and alternative livelihoods.

Gorilla Conservation Coffee stands out from other enterprises within its industry because it works with farmers right at the heart of the gorillas’ habitat. This means that it is involved in the direct conservation efforts on the ground. Another unique fact about Gorilla Conservation Coffee is that aside from supporting farmers with premium prices for good coffee, part of the donation received from coffee bags sold also goes directly into supporting the health and conservation efforts of CTPH at Bwindi. Gorilla Conservation Coffee also stands out as a double impact social enterprise, making impact both in the social and environmental sectors. Gorilla Conservation Coffee’s first coffee brand name, Kanyonyi, has a unique origin. It is named after the lead silverback of the Mubare gorilla group, the first group to he habituated for tourism in Uganda, and this has helped the customers have a personal connection with the brand.

Gorilla Conservation Coffee’s first coffee brand, Kanyonyi

In its journey towards growth, Gorilla Conservation Coffee has experienced some exciting and memorable moments. For Dr. Gladys Kalema, creating a brand that could pass the intended message to people and stocking their coffee in over 30 outlets in Uganda continues to be a great achievement. Gorilla Conservation Coffee also took part in a crowdfunding campaign where they sold coffee to over 17 countries around the world. To add onto these great achievements, their coffee was tested and approved as being among the best kind in Uganda. It was tested by a specialist coffee taster in the Ugandan Coffee Development Authority.

With great milestones achieved, there are challenges involved and Gorilla Conservation Coffee has its own fair share of these. The biggest challenge has been selling green coffee at a high price. This is a challenge because their consumers are more willing to buy roasted branded coffee at a high price as compared to the green coffee, which is more available on the market. Furthermore, the earnings the business receives from selling green coffee cannot sustain it. Gorilla Conservation Coffee is therefore making every effort to sell coffee as an end product (roasted branded coffee) since it can attract the segment of customers who are willing to buy at a high price. Selling this coffee at a higher price will help sustain the business. Focusing on sales development and working closely with outlets that sell coffee as an end product will also help overcome this challenge.

The specific industry opportunities being addressed by Gorilla Conservation Coffee are in the coffee and conservation industry. In the coffee industry, Gorilla Conservation Coffee is at the forefront to ensure that Ugandan coffee is internationally recognised as an independent coffee brand. In conservation, Gorilla Conservation Coffee is addressing the issue of providing sustainable financing for conservation. However, one of the key challenges faced in the coffee industry is that internationally, people aren’t fully aware of Ugandan coffee and haven’t embraced it as the good quality coffee it has grown to become. This challenge is making it difficult to effectively penetrate the international markets.

Gorilla Conservation Coffee is making transformative impact on the local and international community alike. To the local community, they gave a loan to their first lead coffee farmer to help him secure enough manpower for his vast coffee farm during the planting season. The farmer experienced double revenue increase in that season. In a bid to also impact the international community Gorilla Conservation Coffee hosts Coffee Safaris where tourists who have come to track mountain gorillas learn about coffee growing. The tourists take part in harvesting cherries, pulping them and then tasting the coffee while listening to a presentation about Gorilla Conservation Coffee’s impact. So far, five Coffee Safaris have been held.

Dr. Gladys Kalema’s advice to entrepreneurs is that they need to be focused on what they are doing despite the discouragements or distractions that arise along the way. Entrepreneurs must be willing to take calculated risks and when launching a product, they need to first test it in the market and listen to criticisms raised by people.

Gorilla Conservation Coffee stocked in one of the outlets in Uganda

In the next three years, Dr. Gladys Kalema and her team hope to engage more than 300 coffee farmers, seeing that they are currently working with only 75 farmers. They hope to sell coffee to more countries on an online platform as well as reach more outlets across Eastern Africa and engage distributors in USA, Europe and Asia. They also intend to engage other countries in conservation where gorillas exist.

https://growthafrica.com/coffee-farming-saving-mountain-gorillas-uganda/