Uganda, 2026


We’ve said it before, but we’re saying it again: Uganda is back, baby. Back to the days before the paradigm-shaking collapse of our longtime relationship with the centralized cooperative BUCOFA in 2019, chronicled here. When we say it now, we can point to how this claim has earned its resonance, and we can highlight the individuals who embody it. No one does so more fully than Masha Coffee, Sylvia and Alfred Achebet’s project that this year completed its first export of coffees processed at its new site, high up Mt. Elgon. Their story is worth amplifying for its success and how we believe it operates as a blueprint for more Ugandan actors in the near future, but also because it has been riddled with frustrations and setbacks—as true stories tend to be.

This piece is more tightly focused than our standard harvest reviews or previews. It is about one partner, what they’ve accomplished, the literal fruits of those labors now en route to North America, what’s on the horizon heading into future seasons, and how you can help. At the same time, it’s a reminder that doing just about everything right does not always make for smooth sailing.

To more deeply explore any of the additional Ugandan partners rounding out this new era, click on their image below. Otherwise, read on for more about Masha.

History: Ours & Masha’s

It’s tricky for us to discuss Uganda without retracing our company’s history, because—as most reading this likely already know—Uganda is where we started. Our work here began in 2005, and marked the country’s first quality-driven specialty initiative, a collaborative effort that involved establishing micro washing stations. By 2010, we had ironed out our operations to an extent that felt sustainable and showed us what was possible, but by the end of that decade, as farmer groups splintered and stations were eventually absorbed by multinational groups, we chose to step away and work exclusively with Ugandan-owned operations. In doing so, we learned that piecemeal agronomic and logistical support do not produce 86+ pt coffees. Consistently exceptional coffee requires a localized, resilient ecosystem, and an abundance of infrastructure dedicated to precision rather than volume.

It has taken us nearly a decade of searching for partners, coaxing financiers, recruiting producers and mill managers, and chasing talent everywhere we could find it—but right now, we really believe we have. Connecting with Sylvia, Alfred, and Masha Coffee in 2022 was perhaps the most critical turning point. The introduction came through our longtime friend Clare, who ran Quality and Education for the Uganda Coffee Development Authority, and who we first met just as things were falling apart in Bulaago—one door closing, another opening. In her role with the UCDA, Clare cupped just about every coffee that moved through the country, and organized its national harvest competitions. We’d long appreciated her help to aggregate samples and cup on our behalf, and when we asked her who in Uganda was doing the best work, she brought us to Sylvia.

But long before winning us over, Sylvia and her husband Alfred had earned the trust of their community through years working as a nurse and doctor in their home district of Kween. Sylvia’s progression from clinician to coffee producer replays a sentiment we’ve heard from many rural health care professionals: you need acute care to treat symptoms, but to meaningfully influence causes—stabilize income. She already had the standing and the space for it, including a giant tree on the family property that neighbors had nicknamed “the boardroom.” With help from Alfred, she launched Masha from the family farm in 2019, and as her profile grew throughout and beyond the community, more and more visitors began stopping by “the boardroom,” facilitating NGO funding for community training and outreach, which she used to build early infrastructure like solar drying beds.

Eventually, with participation exceeding the initial site’s capacity, the Achebets broke ground on a new washing station in Kabeywa, near Sipi Falls, at an elevation of 1,900 meters, with a collection zone running from 1,800 up to 2,400. In addition to the raw altitude advantages, this location and the mill’s construction were designed to be fiercely self-contained, in response to how difficult the place can be to access and how vulnerable the surrounding roads are to washouts. To mitigate uncontrolled fermentation from transit delays, Masha processes deep into the night as deliveries arrive, employing precise bypass demucilaging and temperature-calibrated fermentation protocols. Drying is equally methodical: a brief phase of full-sun drip drying and hand-picking, followed by controlled rotation in fully vented greenhouses over 7 – 12 days to slowly stabilize moisture content and water activity. The processing is supervised by Sylvia’s sister, Eunice, a trained agronomist who more recently earned CQI Processing credentials as well.

Everything in its right place

With the station complete and the team assembled, 2026 was set to be Masha’s first year exporting coffee processed from its own headquarters, and we shouldn’t diminish the accomplishment—they did it, and did it well. Using the sweetest, highest-Brix count cherries in the region, their slow, well-calibrated wet fermentation yielded a remarkably clean and vibrantly tropical profile, reminding us of ripe pineapple and passionfruit. At every sampling juncture, the quality has held up, and with nearly 300 bags produced, that is truly an accomplishment that we can’t wait to share once these coffees arrive later in August.

But as the timeline implies, things did not unfold as intended. In late 2025, as the season was beginning, Masha again ran into issues with its “impact fund” financing partner, Exim Uganda. Like the previous year, Exim did not disburse Masha’s approved funds until December, lagging behind the harvest and sending them into a scramble to concentrate purchasing. Additionally, they released only 60% of Masha’s approved line, ~10% lower than industry standard, forcing their hands in terms of milling and export partners. At that point, the situation deteriorated even further, with a much higher-than-anticipated milling loss, decreasing an expected 330 bag total lot size down to 290.

Even with all of the work, all of the trust building in the community and investment in the infrastructure—their trajectory was still derailed.

As far as intermediary orchestration is concerned, plans have been made to do better next year. This time, however, the best we could do was maintain a fair FOB price plus an additional buffer that will allow us to invest more in their operation ahead of the next harvest. Strategically, we’ll be linking them with Progreso and Root Capital for more diversified credit next season, and steering them toward The Coffee Yard for dry-milling. The link with The Coffee Yard should also help Masha level up aspects of their accounting, pinning them to a model in line with the cost-plus cherry buying framework that we successfully piloted with TCY this year. Thankfully, there’s no need to fix what isn’t broken—their wet mill did indeed yield strong volume of excellent coffee, so the priority is assembling the right pieces around it.

The kitchen

In addition to facilitating the right connections outside of Masha, we’re also excited to contribute directly to an improvement right on site—a kitchen. The washing station itself was finished only last year, and its conspicuous status as a shiny new spectacle has turned it into something greater than the sum of its coffee infrastructural parts. Like the “boardroom” once upon a time, this place is now a hub of all sorts. Agronomists and field mobilizers use it to hold training sessions and distribute seedlings. During harvest, farmers work their fields in the morning, then head to Kabeywa in the afternoon to deliver cherry. As we and everyone in the area knows all too well, rains often make it impossible to return home when planned, meaning farmers are often stuck waiting out washed-out roads well into the evening. Add in the 20+ staff working the station through peak season, and there are a lot of mouths to feed.

With all that in mind, the team’s proposal for a community kitchen feels extremely apt. For our part, we’re looking to raise $15,000, and contributions from roasters can go a tremendous way in bringing this vision to fruition faster.

THE BLUEPRINT

In spite of the challenges, Masha is our blueprint for what Ugandan coffee can be when we have this level of processing precision taking place at such high altitudes.

What’s even more exciting is that Masha is not an isolated success. What’s happening there is part of a broader and still-widening pipeline of stellar Ugandan coffee projects helmed by Ugandans. This season, also from Mt. Elgon, we had even more logistical success with Norman from The Coffee Yard, whose coffees landed in May and have been ripping off the cupping table—at time of writing, there are still 4 lots with some spot availability.

Looking ahead to December, Barbara from Kwezi Coffee is preparing to export a mixed specialty container that bridges Uganda’s premier regions, combining lots from her homeland in the western Rwenzori mountains with early-harvest microlots from Mt. Elgon in the east.

Furthermore, we are preparing for massive scale in the coming year. We mentioned Progreso earlier, and gave them much-deserved attention in an earlier write-up on our work in Peru, and lining them up here in Uganda will prove to be huge. They are currently deploying capital to upgrade quality infrastructure across several partner cooperatives, all set to come online next season.

Yes, we really do mean it—Uganda is back. It’s not exactly the same Uganda where we started operating back in 2005, and the multinationals may still have their volume, but meaningful infrastructure for true, traceable specialty coffee is again in the hands of the producers. To us, this feels like home.

Get in touch to grab some of Masha’s 2026 export and secure your spot for the stellar seasons to come.