World renowned, conservationist from Uganda, Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka talking about saving mountain gorillas by improving the health and wealth of coffee farmers around Bwindi Impenetrable National Park.
To listen to the radio interview, the clip starts (37:28 seconds)
Click https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/play/w172w1fpjz1btbv
By Olivia DeSmit, Conservation International on 12 September 2018
Gorilla Conservation Coffee with a view of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. (Courtesy of Gorilla Conservation Coffee)
Editor’s note: September 29 marks National Coffee Day in the U.S. Throughout the month of September, Human Nature is highlighting Conservation International’s sustainable coffee work. This post is the second post in the series.
There are only 1,000 mountain gorillas in existence. About half of them call the lush setting of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park in southwestern Uganda home, relatively protected from poachers and encroaching development.
For the past two decades, the gorillas — and the communities that live in the shadow of the park, relying on it for food and livelihoods — have had an unlikely ally: coffee. Human Nature spoke with Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, a founding member of Gorilla Conservation Coffee, a program that is working to save gorillas “one sip at a time.”
Question: What is Gorilla Conservation Coffee, and how did it come about?
Answer: Gorilla Conservation Coffee is a social enterprise of the non-profit Conservation Through Public Health. Simply put, it pays a premium price for coffee to help the farmers living around Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, where one of the world’s largest remaining populations of mountain gorillas remains.
But to truly understand the project, we need to go back to 1996.
One of my very first jobs was setting up the veterinary department of the Uganda Wildlife Authority, and shortly after entering the job, I had to deal with the very first scabies skin disease outbreak in the mountain gorillas. We learned that scabies was prevalent in the local communities around the park, and ultimately figured out that in order to protect the gorillas, we first needed to improve the health of the communities that interact with the gorillas. The more work we did in the area, the more we recognized how closely linked poverty, human health and conservation were. We wouldn’t be able to protect the gorillas without the support and involvement of the communities, and by protecting the gorillas and their habitat, we could also help locals thrive.
For many people, gorilla tourism would seem like the obvious solution. And while tourism provides sustainable financing for conservation, not everybody can benefit from tourism. Not everyone can be employed by the park or be a porter or work in a lodge. A large number of people end up not benefitting from tourism, so we needed alternative ways to get more sustainable funding for the park while supporting the communities.
In fact, the answer was right in front of us: The park is ideal coffee-growing land, and even as you are tracking gorillas, you are walking through coffee farms. Coffee has a long and rich history in Uganda, and Bwindi park was no exception.
Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka with members of the Bwindi Coffee Growers Cooperative (© Jo-Anne MacArthur)
Q: So coffee was already being grown in the area, but the communities were still struggling with extreme poverty and health issues?
A: When we met with the coffee farmers in 2015, they told us their biggest problem was not having a steady market or steady prices for their coffee. People had abandoned their efforts to grow Arabica (a higher quality bean that traditionally commands higher prices) because they were being paid the same amount of money as for Robusta beans, despite Arabica costing significantly more to grow. Apparently coffee traders were paying as little as possible, regardless of the bean type.
Some of the farmers were also poachers, going into the park to hunt for meat because when they wanted meat, they couldn’t afford to buy it. Some people in the community also collected firewood from the park, contributing to deforestation of the gorilla’s habitat, so we figured out that if we could keep people sustained by coffee farming, then they wouldn’t have to go into the park for other activities.
So our first step was to find these farmers a steady price and a steady market.
Q: How does Gorilla Conservation Coffee help the coffee farmers?
A: We have a coffee expert recommended by the Uganda Coffee Development Authority who is almost as passionate about coffee as I am about gorillas. He has helped us set the high quality standards for the coffee — really, he convinced us that we shouldn’t buy bad coffee from farmers, we should only buy good coffee. For the farmers, that translated into a specific set of guidelines for growing coffee, from picking the coffee cherries at the right time to choosing when to pulp them — all things that contribute to a superior product. This is helping them improve their coffee quality because they know they have to be consistent if they want us to buy their coffee, and to get a good price for their coffee. It’s also a ripple effect: They’re using sustainable agriculture and getting better yields, so our hope is others will see that and copy them.
As part of this work, we helped the farmers create the Bwindi Coffee Growers Cooperative. They didn’t have a cooperative to bring them together, which was also contributing to them not getting a fair price, because if you are in a group you can negotiate better. Currently the coffee cooperative has 85 farmers and the chairman of the cooperative sits on the board of Gorilla Conservation Coffee. There is a strong tie to conservation and sustainability because the chairman of the coffee cooperative works within the conservation sector, and the messaging to farmers — don’t go into the park to poach, for example — is clear. Plus, we are buying their coffee, so they don’t really have to go into the park to poach.
Lead Arabica coffee farmer for Gorilla Conservation Coffee in Bwindi, Uganda. (© Jo-Anne MacArthur)
Q: How has the community reacted to Gorilla Conservation Coffee?
A: The community is very excited, and they really feel like we are helping them. One of our biggest buyers is actually two tourism lodges in Bwindi, and they buy more coffee than the private lodges. They even use it in daily consumption and they market it because it’s from their farmers. I think people can clearly see the linkages between gorillas and coffee, and how coffee can be a way to conserve gorillas, not just within the park but within the country at large.
We’ve even started taking tourists on coffee safaris when they come to track gorillas. We team up with coffee farmers who are coexisting with these gorillas, and the tourists really enjoy it because it’s very authentic. The farmer shows them the coffee he has on his farm, the different things he is trying to do. They get to taste the coffee, they get involved in picking it, they get to pulp the coffee. As they drink it, they are getting a presentation about how the work that we are doing is linking the gorilla conservation and the coffee. And they come away feeling really good. Meanwhile, the farmers are getting to meet tourists, which they weren’t before. So, they are getting more into conservation and realizing the importance of conservation to tourism and their livelihoods.
Q: Gorilla Conservation Coffee recently joined the Sustainable Coffee Challenge, an initiative launched by Conservation International and partners to make coffee the world’s first completely sustainable agricultural product. Why?
A: We joined the Challenge in July of this year, as did the Uganda Coffee Development Authority — signaling that the government agency in charge of coffee in Uganda is on board. The Challenge is a network of all the different actors in the coffee supply chain, from growers to traders to merchants. So, joining the Challenge offers us a way to network among sustainable coffee stakeholders and to develop strategic partnerships which will help us achieve our goals. It’s a way to have the right kind of partnerships with those in the sector that share the same values. Ultimately, we want to create a global brand that will always be traceable back to the people that produce it, in a way that will help save gorillas directly, one sip at a time.
Kanyonyi, the silverback gorilla Gorilla Conservation’s Coffee’s first blend was named after. (Courtesy of Gorilla Conservation Coffee)
Q: Do you drink coffee?
A: Yes, we named the first coffee blend after my favorite gorilla, who unfortunately died in December. That’s the Kanyonyi coffee blend. Then we set up a small café where people can experience what we are doing, learn about gorillas and drink coffee. We have set up Uganda’s first conservation café, and we have branded it. In this café, we are learning how to drink more coffee. On top of the normal lattes and macchiatos and cappuccinos, the baristas are quite creative and we are developing all kinds of new drinks. Our children are also learning to drink things like coffee floats and frappuccinos. So yes, we do drink coffee!
Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka is a founding member of Gorilla Conservation Coffee. Olivia DeSmit is a staff writer for Conservation International. Bruno Vander Velde is Conservation International’s editorial director.
Want to buy Gorilla Conservation Coffee? Click here.
By Rupi Mangat, The East African on 25 August 2018
Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka believes in love at first sight because it happened to her.
It was back in 1994 when she was a veterinary student at the University of London’s University Royal Veterinary College.
She had travelled home to Uganda to do field research at the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park when she met and fell in love with Kacupira.
Kacupira was a silverback gorilla, and his name in the local Rukiga language means ‘’broken hand.’’
“Kacupira was so calm and just watched us. Watching him on that day, I felt a real connection with him.” But tragedy struck soon after that fleeting meeting. Kacupira’s group got infected with scabies and was wiped out.
Dr. Kalema-Zikusoka recalls that she was heartbroken and “That’s when we realised that gorillas can get infected with human diseases carried by the local communities whom they share their habitat with. Before that we were more concerned about tourists infecting gorillas. Now another big threat was the local community.”
She became a crusader to save the Bwindi gorillas and founded the Conservation Through Public Health in Uganda in 2003.
Crusader
Dr. Kalema-Zikusoka is soft-spoken and easily gets lost in a crowd, that is until you engage her in conversation, especially about mountain gorillas.
Her voice becomes animated and her demeanour changes to that of a person on a mission.
Ours was a chance meeting at the Louis Leakey Auditorium at the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi recently where she was attending a Kenya Museum Society talk on gorillas by the English couple John and Margaret Cooper.
John is a veterinarian and pathologist and Margaret an animal lawyer who worked with Louis Leakey as his unpaid volunteer on apes between 1950 and 1970.
Kalema-Zikusoka knew she wanted to work with animals from a young age.
In high school, she revived the defunct Wildlife Club and today she is the chairperson of Wildlife Clubs of Uganda, an offshoot of the Wildlife Clubs of Kenya, the oldest grassroots organisation of its kind, started in 1968 to teach students wildlife and environment conservation as a non-academic subject.
Coffee and the Gorillas
With the demise of Kacupira and his group, Dr. Kalema-Zikusoka’s research led her to the coffee farming community around Bwindi.
“They are poor and eking out a living as small scale coffee farmers,” she explains. Since coffee trees are bushy, they are ideal as gorilla hangouts and farmers came up with scarecrows dressed in dirty rags to keep them off their precious crop.
But the farmers went a step too far. The dirty rags were infested with the highly contagious scabies-causing mite, Sarcoptes scabiei.
Although easily treatable in humans, in the great apes it proved lethal.
This is where Conservation Through Public Health came in. “It was the start of Conservation Through Public Health in 2003 because we realised that we had to improve community health if we were to save the gorillas,” says Dr. Kalema-Zikusoka.
Since poverty plays a big role in keeping people unhealthy, she saw an opportunity to improve the livelihood of farmers while saving the gorillas at the same time.
Although coffee is a premium cash crop, the farmers were receiving a pittance for the world’s best loved beverage.
CTPH came up with a social enterprise, the Gorilla Conservation Coffee in 2015, an idea that has transformed the lives of the coffee farmers and the great apes.
“If we could lift the farmers out of poverty by getting better prices for their coffee, we could improve their living standards and save the gorillas. This became our focus,” she says.
The day I met her, Dr. Kalema-Zikusoka was wearing the trademark T-shirt with a gorilla and a coffee bean.
Members of the Bwindi Coffee Growers Co-Operative receive higher prices for the high quality Arabica coffee.
Branded Gorilla Conservation Coffee, it is sold at the Gorilla Conservation Café in Entebbe and many other outlets including tourist lodges in Bwindi and is also available online.
Positive outcome
“Since 2003, CTPH has not lost a single gorilla to scabies,” says the proud gorilla crusader. But there is still a long way to go as she says for there are many more farmers out there who need to be supported by Gorilla Conservation Coffee.
“The other good news is that Ugandans will not kill a gorilla now because of the income they receive from the great ape. We also generate income from tourists walking through the farmers’ coffee fields to reach the park.”
With every sip of Gorilla Conservation Coffee, a gorilla life in Bwindi is saved.
By Nicholas Asingwire, Sautitech on 27 July 2018
In 2003, Dr. Gladys Kalema Zikusoka started CTPH or Conservation Through Public Health. She had 8 years ago graduated from the Royal Veterinary College, London with a Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine, scoring a job at Ugandan Wildlife Service, now the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), as Uganda’s first wildlife veterinary officer.
With half a decade of experience in dealing with wildlife, Dr. Kalema-Kizusoka had learnt that animals, especially gorillas which share 98 percent of DNA with human beings, were increasingly getting exposed to danger, having gone through two traumatic periods of scabies outbreak: in 1996 and between 2001 and 2002. Conservation Through Public Health was started to offset such tragedies.
Dr. Kalema-Zikusoka had also spearheaded the first wildlife translocation to restock Uganda’s national parks following years of poaching during Uganda’s civil wars. And in that same year of starting CTPH, she obtained a Master of Veterinary Medicine from North Carolina State University after conducting research which demonstrated the high risk of tuberculosis (TB) transmission between people and mountain gorillas.
At CTPH, Dr. Zikusoka and her team of 15 continue to promote gorilla conservation by applying a number of methods aiming at facilitating the co-existence of human beings, wildlife, and livestock in and around protected areas in Africa.
After two years of existence, CTPH built a Gorilla Research Clinic in Buhoma, Bwindi Impenetrable National Park’s main tourist site, and it has since been expanded to a larger Gorilla Health and Community Conservation Center. At this facility, the CTPH website shows, tourists are given a behind the scenes tour of gorilla conservation. CTPH officials do this by explaining “our programs including gorilla health monitoring, community health, and livelihoods.”
A sip for gorilla survival
Gazetted in 1991, Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, the home to almost half the world’s population of mountain gorillas, is surrounded by a community of coffee growers because of being on a high altitude, covered with fertile soils. But after visiting the area several times, Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka discovered that most of these farmers were not getting a fair price for their harvests.
From this, she realized, the farmers “were struggling hard to survive, forcing them to use the national park to meet their basic family needs for food and fuelwood.”
Something had to be done. So, in 2015, Gorilla conservation coffee, or GCCoffee, was started. The resources to put the project together were obtained from CTPH and World-Wide Fund (WWF) Switzerland, the largest environmental and conservation organization in Switzerland. Organized as a charitable foundation, WWF Switzerland is part of the global WWF network, whose influence extends to around 1,300 conservation projects in over 100 countries around the world, according to Optimizely.
GCCoffee is a social enterprise and it kicked off with seventy-five coffee farmers, who only grow arabica coffee. The number has since grown to eighty-five, prompting the formation of a group to unite them called Bwindi Coffee Growers Cooperative.
To be part of the cooperative, Dr. Kalema-Zikusoka says, a farmer must have at least 2 acres of arabica coffee. This is inspired by the fact that they want to only to take on farmers who are ready to put in the work and take coffee farming seriously.
Some of the farmers like Vincent Butamanya, 63, who is the vice chairperson of the Bwindi Coffee Growers Cooperative has a farm that sits on 30 acres of land with about 16,000 Arabica trees of below 20 years. GCCoffee says it is working closely with him to ensure that he produces “at least 16 metric tons of coffee in the coming seasons.”
The social enterprise has a plan of coordinating at least twenty of the farmers to have their farms turned into models so that the rest can emulate them. So far, according to Dr. Kalema-Zikusoka, one of the farmers has been given a loan to reinforce his plantation.
Being the biggest buyer of the coffee produced by these farmers, GCCoffee ensures that farmers are walked through the best farming practices such that they have good quality coffee. Most of the coffee is bought in cherry form, according to Dr. Kalema-Zikusoka, but for the farmers who are able to process it further, they are allowed to add value to it for more rewards.
Only two farmers have poppers currently, but there are plans to acquire more of these, she told me. The team of GCCoffee organizes workshops and, in some cases, they move from farmer to farmer to conduct sensitization.
Gorilla Conservation Coffee currently deals with farmers growing only Arabica coffee. According to Dr. Kalema-Zikusoka, growing Arabica coffee requires more input than Robusta (which is also widely grown in the country); they knew that by dealing with Arabica coffee growers, they would be working with committed farmers.
That being said, Arabica is generally better than Robusta in many aspects, including market demand, price on the market. The only difference is that Robusta is easier to grow and it can be cultivated in different areas. The veterinarian, however, told me that Robusta will also be supported with time since some people like a mixture of both.
One sip at a time
To add value to the coffee and create a powerful brand for it, GCCoffee opened up a coffee shop where they sell the coffee. They have also partnered with multiple establishments, including hotels, airports, tourist resorts, national parks and gift shops to distribute the coffee.
Their first coffee blend has been named Arabica Kanyonyi Coffee after Kanyonyi, the former lead silverback gorilla of Mubare Gorilla Group, the first group habituated for tourism at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda, who died in 2017. Dr. Kalema-Zikusoka told me she knew him from his young age. He was 21. The coffee can be bought by visiting various locations in Uganda, or online when in Uganda, USA, New Zealand and Canada.
A pack of Arabica Kanyonyi Coffee (right) is seen placed besides a tea container and a cup. (Picture: GCCoffee)
I met Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka recently at their first coffee shop, Gorilla Conservation Café, located at Plot 19, Portal Rd, Entebbe. On that afternoon of July 4, Deborah, a happy-go-lucky barista at the facility who declined to give me her last name, walked me through the different types of coffee they make. After the insightful lecture, we concluded that I should go for latte macchiato, a combination of milk and Espresso, or concentrated coffee, as I wait for the doctor to arrive for this interview. The coffee shop was opened in December 2017. It is positioned at an exclusive building away from the noise, making it a safe go-to place for people looking to have peace of mind or a quiet rendezvous.
The writer (second from left), Dr. Gladys Zikusoka (extreme right) and the baristas pose for a picture at Gorilla Conservation Coffee Cafe in Entebbe
Partnerships and challenges
Gorilla Conservation Coffee is currently collaborating with seven organizations, namely: WWF Switzerland, UWA, CTPH, Nucafe, Switch African Green-SEED (SAG-SEED), Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) and Bwindi Coffee Growers Cooperative.
These organizations have provided support in different ways. For instance, WWF Switzerland has offered a loan to support coffee farmers, GCCoffee has won a SAG-SEED award and the latter is helping the former in developing a business proposal to obtain funding, Nucafe processes the coffee and UCDA has trained GCCoffee staff.
Arabica Kanyonyi Coffee has so far been sold, through both crowdfunding and other online platforms in Uganda including Jumia and GCCoffee website and local outlets in Uganda and other countries including New Zealand and since June this year, USA and Canada. The choice of countries has been based on friends and tourists who liked the coffee and were willing to market it in their countries.
Just as any other starting venture, GCCoffee has encountered a series of challenges. One of the key challenges has been setting themselves apart as a different brand than what people have been seeing on the market.
“One of the first challenges was describing to people that our coffee is different from other coffees on the market,” Dr. Kalema-Zikusoka told me that afternoon, adding that there are many other coffee dealers who “label themselves as gorilla coffee” but are not necessarily into conservation. They are just using the name as a marketing tool.
“Differentiating ourselves from those other companies has been our first challenge but we are hoping that our marketing is improving,” she said. According to her, “unless someone really knows about conservation, they sometimes confuse us (coffee brands).”
Another issue they have had to deal with is “getting the farmers to produce quality coffee”, but she says they are “addressing it through showing them that we can only buy good coffee from you.”
“That’s already enough to change the way someone treats their coffee,” she said. “They know that they want to get a good price, they want to pay school fees.”
The design of the program also reflects that farmers are shareholders in the venture so they have to work hard to protect it. Farmers, Dr. Gladys told me, are informed from the word go that GCCoffee is not “a donor project or NGO, this is a business; we have a loan we’ve to pay back so we’re all in it together.”
Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka with farmers (Picture: Jo-Anne McArthur)
This style of operation has helped build loyalty from farmers, preventing them from selling coffee to other dealers. Farmers also like the initiative since it has helped them to build a brand and their coffee is bought by GCCofee at a higher price than the ordinary market price.
GCCoffee is also still facing challenges of raising funds. Dr. Kalema-Zikusoka says that it’s difficult to find investors who value the conservation as much as the finance. “There are not many out there. So, yer, raising funds is difficult as well. Raising funds is not easy as well,” she confessed. They have also not got direct financial support from the Ugandan government apart from non-monetary relationships they have with government agencies dealing in tourism like Uganda Tourism Board and UWA. This kind of relationships involves allowing them to sell their products at national parks and showcasing their products at events organized by these organizations.
Dr. Kalema-Zikusoka says that efforts are underway to join Sustainable Coffee Challenge-Conservation International from which they hope to raise “our fundraising chances.” They have also previously participated in an accelerator program organized by GrowthAfrica. To ground herself in non-profit management and business, she has also obtained a certificate in the management of non-profit organizations, from Duke University and in 2016 she got a Master of Business Administration from University of Milan and Tangaza University College, in Kenya.
Her work in the past 23 years has seen her projects scoop multiple awards and get recognized by powerful organizations like the World Economic Forum, Whitley Awards, International Scientific Seed Magazine, World Summit Award, Conde Nast Traveler Magazine and Wings World Quest Women of Discovery Humanitarian Award.
She has also been featured in documentaries in National Geographic, Animal Planet, MNet and Uganda Television.
Gorilla Conservation Coffee is working with Pangols to create jobs and disincentives for poaching through marketing products such as, our Kanyonyi Coffee Blend that reflect both local craftsmanship and native wildlife.