ROME – Uganda’s Prime Minister, Rt. Hon. Robinah Nabbanja, has asked Italian companies to process Ugandan coffee, milk and minerals inside Uganda instead of importing them as raw materials.
She was speaking at the opening of the first Uganda–Italy Business and Investment Forum at Rome Cavalieri, a Waldorf Astoria hotel in the Italian capital, on Tuesday.
“We want our people from Italy to take coffee made in Uganda. Not grown in Uganda,” Rt. Hon. Nabbanja told Ugandan officials and Italian business leaders. She said roasting and packing would create jobs for Uganda’s young population.
Italy is the biggest buyer of Ugandan coffee. Uganda exported 8.8 million 60kg bags of coffee in the year ending April 2026, earning $2.4 billion, a Ministry of Agriculture report shows.
Rt. Hon. Nabbanja said Ugandan farmers who grow, tend and harvest coffee still earn very little from raw beans, while a kilogramme of finished coffee sells for about 50 euros in Italy.
“That is where I want partnerships, so that we can help that poor Ugandan who makes you have a cup of coffee on the table,” she said.
Dr Gerald Kyalo, Commissioner for Coffee at the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries, said more than 12 million Ugandans depend on coffee for their livelihood and that Italy takes about a quarter of Uganda’s coffee exports.
He said Uganda is Africa’s biggest producer of robusta, which makes up 89% of the country’s coffee, with arabica accounting for 11%. Italy has bought more than two million bags of Ugandan coffee in each of the past five years, he said.
“You are our main market, and we are your most important supplier of coffee,” Dr Kyalo told Italian buyers.
He said production had reached 9.5 million bags in 2025/26, and that Uganda was on track to meet the coffee roadmap target of 20 million bags by 2030 after distributing more seedlings to farmers.
Dr Kyalo said Italian buyers had asked whether Uganda was ready for the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), which requires proof that imported coffee is not grown on deforested land.
He said Uganda had registered 1.5 million farmers and mapped 1.6 million coffee gardens, and expected to reach 2.6 million gardens by the end of December. A traceability system linking farmers, traders and a national data warehouse is being piloted, he said.
“We are ready for EUDR. Don’t lose sleep that you will not have coffee from Uganda,” he said.
Dr Kyalo said Uganda consumes only about 7% of the coffee it produces, and invited Italian firms to set up soluble coffee plants in the country. He said Ugandan coffee exports would carry a national “Ugandan Coffee” brand and logo from the next financial year.
The two-day forum, themed “Unlocking Shared Prosperity”, is organised by Uganda’s Embassy in Italy with Confindustria Assafrica & Mediterraneo, the UNIDO Investment and Technology Promotion Office (ITPO) Italy and Bergs & More Srl. It focuses on oil, gas and energy, agroindustry, manufacturing, and pharmaceuticals and healthcare, with a proposal for industrial parks for Italian manufacturers under the label “Made with Italy in Uganda”.
The forum is part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ push to turn Uganda’s embassies into drivers of trade and investment.
Under the ministry’s Economic and Commercial Diplomacy (ECD) Strategy for 2025/26 to 2029/30, launched in Gulu in August 2025, missions serve as frontline platforms for exports, foreign direct investment, tourism, technology partnerships and climate finance. The strategy is aligned with Vision 2040, the fourth National Development Plan and the Tenfold Growth Strategy, and aims to make the foreign service more commercially focused and accountable for measurable economic results.
The Tenfold Growth Strategy seeks to expand the economy from $50 billion to $500 billion by 2040 through agro-industrialisation, tourism, mineral development, and science, technology and innovation, known as ATMS. It also aims to raise annual foreign direct investment from $2.9 billion in 2022 to $50 billion by 2040.
Rt. Hon. Nabbanja told investors the economy currently stood at $69 billion and was growing at about 6% a year. She tied each of the four ATMS pillars to openings for Italian firms, from agroprocessing machinery and cold chains to hotels, mineral value addition and pharmaceuticals.
She said the government planned to generate 52,000 megawatts of electricity by 2040, saying industrialisation was impossible without power.
On medicine, she said the COVID-19 pandemic had taught Africa that it could not depend on others for its drugs, and invited Italy’s pharmaceutical industry to manufacture in Uganda for the region.
Rt. Hon. Nabbanja asked the Italian government to consider Uganda a priority country for projects under the Mattei Plan, Rome’s partnership framework for Africa. She also urged CDP, SACE and SIMEST, Italy’s state-backed lending, export credit and investment institutions, to support Italian companies entering Uganda.
Italy’s development cooperation agency, AICS, opened an office in Kampala in 2025 and lists Uganda as a priority country for Italian cooperation in health, education, agriculture and environmental conservation.
The Prime Minister said investors’ capital and profits would be protected by law, and that her office, which coordinates government business, would personally intervene where investors faced obstacles.
Dr Robert Mukiza, Director General of the Uganda Investment Authority (UIA), told investors they could earn a 14% return on investment in Uganda. He said that was rare anywhere in the world.
He said Africa’s population would reach 2.5 billion by 2050, with 1.1 billion people in the middle class, and urged Italian companies to serve the continent from Uganda through the East African Community, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the African Continental Free Trade Area.
“The most important market in the world, whether you want it or not, is Africa. You better get there now, and serve Africa from Uganda,” Dr Mukiza said.
He said the UIA’s one-stop centre, set up under the Investment Code Act 2019, brings business registration, tax identification, environmental certification, building permits, work permits and banking under one roof.
Dr Mukiza compared the authority to a duck gliding on water. “The feet are always flapping. Those feet are the Uganda Investment Authority, such that you as a business continue to glide smoothly,” he said.
He said investors who add value to Ugandan products would get free serviced land in industrial parks, a 10-year tax holiday, tax-free imports of plant and machinery, and tax deductions for research and training. The UIA’s aftercare division would support companies after licensing, he added.
Dr Mukiza said the country needed investment in power generation and transmission to reach its 2040 target, and called on Italian financiers to help lower the cost of capital and reduce the risk of investing in Uganda.
Hez Kimoomi Alinda, Executive Director of the Uganda Free Zones and Export Promotion Authority (UFZEPA), said investors in Uganda’s special economic zones would find incentives comparable to those in Italy.
Alinda said trade between the two countries remained small, and that Italy mostly uses Uganda’s high-grade robusta to blend with coffee from Brazil and elsewhere.
He said Ugandan fish accounted for only 2% of Italy’s fish imports. He said Italy imports Ugandan cocoa unroasted, and urged Italian firms to set up plants in Uganda to make cocoa butter, cocoa liquor and chocolate.
He listed fresh fruit and vegetables, vanilla, tea, spices, dairy, aquaculture, cold chains, packaging, IT-enabled services and tourism as other areas open to Italian investors.
Alinda said the European Union was a leading importer of Ugandan fresh produce, but Uganda lacked enough testing laboratories to meet EU standards. He invited Italian firms to build them.
“Come to Uganda, aggregate our fresh fruits and vegetables and open a distribution chain in Italy. Nobody will compete with you,” he said.
He also offered Italian investors a free 1,031-square-metre production facility at Entebbe for value addition aimed at the Italian and EU markets.
Humphrey Asiimwe, Chief Executive of the Uganda Chamber of Energy and Minerals, invited Italian firms into energy, oil and gas, and mining. He said Uganda has 58 known minerals, 23 of them commercially viable, including graphite, tin, tungsten and rare earths needed for the energy transition.
He said a British firm was already mining graphite at Orom in northern Uganda, and an Australian firm was developing heavy rare earths in eastern Uganda.
“Uganda is at the precipice of first oil,” Asiimwe said. He said the country would announce its first barrel of Pearl Sweet crude on the international market in the coming months, opening opportunities in refining, petrochemicals, fertiliser production and pipeline services. He said the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development had also opened new areas for oil exploration.
Asiimwe said 95% of Uganda’s electricity comes from hydropower and the country currently generates about 2,100 megawatts. He said Uganda allows independent power transmission, so private investors can build and earn from power lines connected to the East African Power Pool. He invited Italian firms to invest in generation, transmission, distribution and battery storage.
He said Uganda does not allow the export of mineral ores or concentrates, and wants minerals refined in the country. Gold, Uganda’s biggest export, is 99.98% refined locally, he said, adding that mining licences are managed through a transparent online cadastre.
A video by the Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC) shown at the forum presented the 29square-kilometre Kabalega Industrial Park near Lake Albert. The park is built around a planned 60,000-barrel-a-day refinery and is projected to contribute nearly $5 billion a year to GDP and create more than 30,000 direct and indirect jobs.
Asiimwe said mining investors are also exempt from VAT on raw materials.
Uganda’s Ambassador to Italy, Elizabeth Paula Napeyok, said both countries wanted to move the relationship beyond diplomacy.
“We would like to see the relationship graduating from only diplomatic matters to trade and investment,” she said.
Dr Fabrizio Lobasso, of Italy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, said Italy wanted joint ventures in Uganda rather than simple export trade, including in technology, skills and digitalisation.
He said a delegation from the Italian foreign ministry was expected to visit Uganda in early November.
“This morning I had my espresso, and inside the cup I didn’t see only coffee. I see the commitment of Ugandan farmers,” Dr Lobasso said.
Giorgio Traietti, a board member of Confindustria Assafrica & Mediterraneo, said Italian companies saw Uganda as a gateway to the East African market. He said his association would follow up with the UIA, the Uganda Chamber of Energy and Minerals and UFZEPA.
