The 2018 edition of Africa Trade and Investment Summit (ATIGS) is scheduled for June 24-26, in Washington DC, USA, organisers say, with Uganda which has discovered oil and is set to start drilling by 2020 being among the African countries expected to attend.

ATIGS is a high-level conference and trade platform designed specifically to promote and facilitate international trade and foreign direct investment in Africa, with attendance projection of over 2,000 participants from more than 70 countries meeting for a three-day networking, marketing, matchmaking and deal making among others.

The conference covers 16 economic and natural resources sectors such as energy, minerals, telecommunications, finance, agro-processing among others.

The event will have the participation of more than 150 speakers, over 160 exhibitors, high-level government delegations, project developers, business leaders, trade promotional organizations and investment promotion agencies from various African countries, and over 350 global investors including pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, private equity and asset management firms.

The event will feature African countries’ pavilions with representative companies sourcing for international partners and investments, and government agencies showcasing the wide range of trade and investment opportunities that are available in their respective countries.

“There will also be Middle East, Europe, USA, Canada, and Asia exhibition/pavilions representing companies and government agencies with interests to engage with Africa,” indicates a recent brief statement.

The event is sponsored by Africa Global Chamber of Commerce, The Africa Society, International Trade Council, World Trade Centre, Capital Consulting and Energy and Environment Partnership among other global institutions.

Prominent global figures like Julian Roberts CEO, Old Mutual and African businessmen like Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, President and CEO Dangote Group and Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum on Africa; and billionaire businessman Tony Elumelu, Chairman of Heirs Holdings are expected to grace the event more so to speak about the opportunities that the resource-rich continent offers.

African political leaders argue that trade and investments, rather than aid, will spur the continent’s development much faster.

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Coffee is Uganda’s most valuable agricultural export commodity, contributing US$ 544 million in 2016/17, about 20 percent of total export earnings.  Furthermore, the crop, employs over 3.5 million households.

However, despite such rosy status, a recent study by the Economic Policy Research Centre (EPRC), shows that the advent of climate change is a double blow to the technologically constrained coffee production system in Uganda.

‘Between 2007 and 2016, Uganda lost coffee seedlings worth US$ 10 million. In 2015/2016 alone, seedlings worth US $ 3 million did not germinate due to drought’, the EPRC Policy Brief indicates in part.

According to EPRC, predictions demonstrate that climate change is likely to stifle the coffee development program in Uganda at three levels: by reducing survival rate of coffee seedlings to expand coffee acreage, exacerbate productivity challenges in an inherently constrained rain-fed low input coffee production system.

It is also likely to contribute to reduction in quality of coffee beans leading to low export earnings. ‘This is likely to slow down the low middle-income status by 2020 target of exporting 20 million (60 Kg bags) annually’, warns the Brief.

Further, the evaluation report by the Operation Wealth Creation together with the President’s Office shows that because of drought, the survival rate of 93 million coffee seedlings planted during the first season of 2016 was only 42 percent, with 39 million seedlings surviving.

Rising temperatures, the Brief notes, are expected to render certain low altitude areas less suitable or even completely unsuitable for Robusta coffee growing, implying that fewer parts of Uganda will be suitable for coffee production.     “With an increase in temperature of only 20C, there would be a dramatic decrease in amount of land suitable for growing Robusta coffee in Uganda. As suitable Robusta coffee growing areas reduce, some farmers will try to push further up the mountains. This will bring coffee into conflict with other land uses and driving migration out of coffee-producing areas to sustain production,” it adds.

The Brief further notes that expanding acreage has been the main option pursued by government to get to the 20 million bags of coffee target by 2020. ‘It is apparent that since early 2000s till 2015, Uganda has by and large promoted coffee acreage expansion from about 320 to about 402 thousand hectares, while paying minimal attention to improving productivity’, it says.

Authors of the Brief note that an average threshold of 600 kilograms per hectare has been maintained in Uganda-under ‘rain-fed’ production farming system. “As a consequence, this has had limited impact on output-which has remained stuck at 3.5 million bags,” they say.

They say that countries such as Vietnam aggressively adopted both extensive planting and irrigation intensification to raise yield per hectare to 2,100 kgs. ‘For Vietnam, this approach led to steady progress in increasing coffee production and export and by 2015, the country had attained annual export volumes of 23.4 million bags of coffee’, they note in the Brief.

Given the devastating effects of climate change on coffee, the Brief says farmers will have to cope with additional farm investments required to adapt to climate change. One of the avenues, the Brief says, is allowing farmers have a fair share of profit margins that accrue deeper along the value chain as proposed and practiced by the National Union of Coffee Agribusinesses and Farm Enterprises (NUCAFE).

But most coffee farmers in Uganda are ill prepared to tackle climate change, and are unlikely able to invest in small innovation strategies to cope with climate change, the Brief notes, calling for strong and effective institutional arrangements that guarantees stability in incomes from coffee and hence high returns on coffee farm investment. The farmer ownership model now provides a sustainable value chain adaptation strategy the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) should scale up for more efficient climate smart agriculture, it says.

NUCAFE, estimates that if Uganda were to roast and package all coffee beans exported as raw green beans worth US $ 400 million, the export earnings could more than quadruple to US$ 2 billion.

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Uganda’s chances of benefiting from various debt restructuring and relief initiatives are limited and the country is unlikely to be bailed out this time, a local non-government organization, the Uganda Debt Network (UDN), has warned in its latest update on the country’s debt trends.

Uganda has formally benefited from various debt restructuring and relief initiatives; both bilateral and multilateral such as  The 1989 Toronto Terms; 1992 Enhanced Toronto Terms; 1995 Naples Terms and 1998 Lyon Terms, which were all on bilateral basis.

The Multilateral initiatives that the country benefited from include; Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs) (1997, 2000, 2002); 2002 Monterrey Summit and 2006 Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI). “Even so, Uganda’s debt accumulation path still concerns us and could be a lesson for African economies,” warns UDN, a national NGO that analyses the country’s national debt processes.

According to the update issued by Julius Kapwepwe, the UDN Director of Programmes, there is need for government to expend and improve domestic revenue by widening, and deepening tax base as well as concentrating on a few but strategic exports like minerals.

It adds that public infrastructural investment should be linked to rapid growth areas such as Agro-industrial linkages but also address tax dodging especially illicit financial flows (IFFs) “UK AID has worked closely with Uganda Revenue Authority towards plugging holes in aspects of IFFs,” the release indicates but adds more remains to be done.

UDN also wants government to address the real causes of debt accumulation: “Go to the roots not leaves in dealing with underlying causes for debt accumulation beyond mere debt restructuring,” it says, adding that government should  continue to advocate against global and regional unfair international trade regimes.

More so, UDN says government should ensure feasible use and utilization of the borrowed funds as way of containing low absorption rates that have been regularly reported on public debt.

The NGO also wants government to and revise the Debt Sustainability Analysis (DSA) framework: “The IMF and World Bank should revise the current DSA frame to corporate in variables… that pro-vide the real picture of the economy especially reflecting on is-sues like domestic arrears which are currently ignored in the present frame work,” it says adding that the CSOs already raised this with IMF, UN, Donor Economic Group and others.

It says there is also need to check creditors who by-pass the country’s legal, institutional and policy regimes or any other tenets for good lending and borrowing. This, UDN says leads to illegitimate debts that should not be paid.

In June this year, finance minister Matia Kasaija reported that Uganda’s external and domestic debt had hit $8.7 billion (sh28 trillion).

According to Kasaija, the debt burden, which is almost equivalent to this year’s national budget, accounts for 33.8% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Government debt as a percent of GDP is used by investors to measure a country’s ability to make future payments, and a negative perception can affect the country’s borrowing costs and government bond yields.

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