Uganda's Smallholder tea growers got an $8 million interest-free loan from the Danish International Development Agency (Danida) to buy processing machines.

This is expected to increase the sector's capacity to process recently increased harvest volumes which are currently going to waste due to limited processing capacity.

“Currently, we are producing green tea that is more than our established processing capacity can handle. Instead of farmers harvesting the leaves on a daily basis, they are now regulating their harvests to thrice a week and that means they have to cut and throw away the useful leaves.” said Okasaai Opolot, Commissioner for Crop Production and Marketing.

Uganda's government will provide $1.5 million to build a two-line processing plant and also finance the construction of a third line at Igara Tea Growers, to increase capacity.

The increased production is a result of an earlier government intervention to revamp the collapsed industry. It has trained farmers and supplied them with free high-yielding tea clones developed in Kericho, Kenya.

The smallholder tea sector in Uganda produces about eight million kilos of made tea representing about 20% of the country’s total made tea production.

World tea production has stayed around 2.6 billion kilogrammes for the past five years, of which 11% comes from Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda combined.

“The plan is to increase production as long as there is a ready market. We are expanding tea plantations and targeting development of a Uganda bran Ugandan coffee already has a brand while tea is still being sold in the open markets in Mombasa,” Mr Opolot said.