Episode 49: Enabling Increased Cocoa Cultivation in Northern Uganda

'Adag-anii means that we don't want rumours, we want to work.'

Okullo Paul Peter is Managing Director of Adag-Anii Ltd, based in the the Lango sub-region of Uganda. In this chat he has a great story about how his company go its name - 'adag-anii.'

He talks to us about helping farmers adapt to growing cocoa as a cash generating, environmentally responsible alternative to maize. In partnership with the Climate Smart Jobs program, the idea is to help farmers access the market by helping them at all points in the process: preparation, cultivation, harvesting, processing and selling. And the aim is pretty simple when you boil it down - to ease the poverty that many people experience on a daily basis in these regions, partly as a result of climate change.

Cocoa has an interesting history in Uganda, as it turns out. It's been grown here since it was first introduced at the Entebbe Botanical Gardens in 1901. Initially, production was mainly limited to plantations, though - it was only adopted by smallholder producers in 1958. The crop is now grown by an estimated 120,000 smallholder farmers in at least 22 Districts, with more than two-thirds of the national harvest coming from Bundibugyo District; Hoima, Mukono and Kagadi are the other important producing districts.

In the bigger picture, cocoa is now one of the leading agricultural export commodities after coffee, with volumes more than doubling over the past decade. In 2024/25 some 75,545 tonnes, worth US $620 million, were exported to markets in both Asia and Europe. So this shift in priorities that Okullo Paul Peter is speaking about? For farmers, it makes a lot of sense.

Thanks so much to Okullo Paul Peter for taking time to speak with us. If you'd like more info about the Climate Smart Jobs Program, click on this link. Thanks for listening and see you next time,

Josephine