One of the few remaining tobacco farmers in Busangwa village in Hoima prepares the tobacco leaves for drying. PHOTO | MORGAN MBABAZI | NMG At the peak of production in 2013, tobacco leaf was one of Uganda’s biggest foreign exchange earners, raking in $120 million in exports revenue and employing over 75,000 farmers who were producing about 18,000 tonnes per year.
Started in the 1920s by British American Tobacco (BAT), tobacco farming and the entire industry was so vibrant that in 2012, British American Tobacco Uganda (Batu) — the biggest exporter of Ugandan leaf at the time — invested about $1 million in its central purchasing point in Hoima, Bunyoro sub-region, an area that had 15,000 of Batu’s 30,000 contracted farmers.
In the same year, BAT Group also relocated its regional headquarters for leaf operations for eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, from South Africa to Uganda. A BAT Uganda worker at the tobacco processing plant in Kampala in 2012. PHOTO | MORGAN MBABAZI | NMG Following this move, in 2013 Batu earned about $60 million from exporting tobacco leaf and paid $21.7 million to the Ugandan government in taxes, which made the company one of the top 10 taxpayers in Uganda. Downward spiral
However, with campaigns against tobacco growing and consumption and Uganda’s 2015 passing of strong control laws — such as banning of direct advertising and an increase in taxation — the industry went through a downward spiral.
In 2014, Batu ceded its tobacco leaf operations in the country to Alliance One International and decided to concentrate on its cigarette business arm.
Between 2017 and 2019, NIMA Tobacco Company, Continental Tobacco and Tropical Leaf Company failed to pay a total of $3 million for the tobacco leaf they got from farmers in the Bunyoro sub-region, one of the areas where many farmers grew tobacco.
The farmers subsequently took the tobacco companies to court. The government has since denied the three companies’ licences to contract farmers for tobacco growing in the area. A lone tobacco crop within a maize and beans farm in Hoima. PHOTO | MORGAN MBABAZI | NMG However, other new players, such as Alliance One Uganda, Global Leaf Holdings, Meridian Tobacco and Uganda Tobacco Services, have operations in the area, but output has since dropped to an all-time low.
By 2020, less than 10,000 tonnes of tobacco leaf were produced across the country, and annual revenue from exports had fallen […]