From monopoly marketing to coffeemagendo: responses to policy recklessness and extraction in Uganda, 1971–79

Abstract

This article argues that the recklessness and extractive policies of Amin's regime aggravated the failures of the state coffee monopoly marketing system, and highlights the responses by different actors at the production and marketing levels. As the “economic war” escalated and the resource base contracted, the regime was increasingly extractive of the coffee resource. Meanwhile, the regime's recklessness boomeranged with tightening international embargoes that had adverse repercussions on the state marketing channel. Consequently, coffee marketing became a contested arena between the state versus the differently positioned actors and producers. Amidst monopoly marketing failures, extractive policies and fluctuating international price trends, the article highlights producer's response through declining coffee production. With the windfall coffee booms, the differently positioned actors strove to sell the coffee through the “illegal” parallel coffee smuggling (magendo), which became dominant. The article explores the modus operandi and impact of magendo on coffee producers, and its subsequent decline.

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