Jan 26, 2016 Uganda recently held its 9th Barista championship, an annual contest designed to promote the country’s coffee and unveil the brewer with the best coffee-making skills.
The championship, which had 16 contestants, featured the preparation of espressos, cappuccinos and original beverages for four judges within 15-minutes.
Commenting on coffee consumption, Janet Muthoni, a coffee fan said:
“I appreciate coffee in a way I never thought possible. You have got different coffee beans that’s what I have come to discover and the creativity from the contestants it’s not just the normal coffee whereby you just go and get coffee beans and you just drink, they have taught me that you can actually mix up the coffee with one of your favorite ingredients and you will get same thing that you really love,”
The new coffee drinking culture has seen various chains open coffee cafés in Uganda as well as Kenya, Nigeria and Rwanda.
Commenting on this, Eddie Mupende, the event’s organizer said:
“Uganda is a small consumer of coffee; we export a lot of coffee but consume little coffee. This is one of the activities we do to actually encourage the consumption of coffee in Uganda, because I think Uganda consumes only about two percent of the coffee they produce. So we want actually Uganda to become the first consumer of the coffee they produce,”
Anderson Were, who runs Amagara café in Kampala, said:
“Almost every building in Kampala is having a coffee shop and that compared to what happened five years ago is a plus for the country we are literally saying the country is in the right direction and I believe in the next ten years Uganda coffee consumption will be very competitive in this part of the world especially in the East African region,”