Mar 4, 2010
Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club Selling Ugandan Coffee Grown On The Blood Of Executed Gays & Lesbians
In 2010 after several false starts, a group of pioneers labouring in different corners of Uganda’s vast farm sector achieved a major milestone placing Ugandan coffee in one of the largest storefronts in the United States…Sam’s Club
The Sam’s Club Stores are the upscale shopping front for the Wal Mart Stores- the world’s biggest retailers. These clubs are thousands of square feet of shopping real estate, 600 in total littered all over the country. Wal Mart, the parent, runs another 4,800 shopping centres. The Wal Mart “effect” on the US economy is a multiplier far beyond its $180 billion in annual sales.
For all the years of neglect and under-investment, coffee remains Uganda’s most important export. A robust coffee recovery to its 1970 levels can turn around. It is one product where Uganda enjoys a comparative advantage. It does not carry the adverse environment impacts now being felt after a short time in new economy ventures like fishing (now linked to over-fishing on Lake Victoria), flower growing whose flow of chemicals have turned parts of Lake Victoria into a cesspool, or cotton whose lint which requires a lot of chemicals to maintain quality and protection from tropical pests.
Coffee has some democratic elements to it. More than 500,000 households grow coffee. Coffee is grown at the last count in more than two thirds of Uganda’s districts. At the last count, new coffee is blooming in areas traditionally zoned for cotton like the sub regions of Acholi and Lango that, with irrigation, could turn into major coffee producers.
Uganda’s coffee does not enjoy brand visibility. Smaller coffee producers like Rwanda (about $50 million and producing one sixth of Uganda’s output) have yielded better returns in programming quality, and spending wisely on promotion in the American market. It would seem that a strategy that avoids or harms the American opportunity would be foolhardy. The American coffee market is a marketing dream. The American consumes about 1.66 coffee cups per capita.
In 2003, this proposition translated into about $6.8 billion at the sales registers. Convincing skeptical American business people that Uganda is ready for anything is a tough sell. Uganda coffee, up to this point, still shows up at the bottom of the heap in the lower grades. Savvy producers dump their worst coffee and market it as Ugandan blacks highlighting the caffeine content and low prices in ways that other coffee producers like Tanzania, Rwanda, Kenya and Ethiopia would never countenance.
So as the Kill the Gays Bill publicity starts to fade– in Uganda many big things have a short shelf life– the American press continues to highlight the Kill the Gays Bill as detailed last week. It comes at a time when Sam’s Club is carrying a major first for Uganda; Uganda Mountain Coffee- a blend of three of Uganda’s best coffee(s): Bugisu AA, Okoros, and Drugars grown by farmers in Mbale, Nebbi and Kasese.
In America, we have two forms of governance: The common public sector dominated by government and elected officials and the private sector dominated by markets, private enterprise and social groups. The latter rules for the most part.
The American public first receptive to the experiment-the coffee is carried in 75 stores in more than 20 states- starts to point out that the coffee is from Uganda where the government promise execution or life in prison for private sexual conduct.
American retailers have a host of legal exposure they contend with everyday for business decisions they make. One of the rules of thumb is to drop merchandise that riles consumers and increases its exposure.
Gay and Lesbian American consumers who spend billions at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club every year will not tolerate Wal-Mart’s support for the Ugandan Gay and Lesbian Death Camps.
Email Wal-Mart or call their Media Relations at 1-800-331-0085 and tell their executives you will boycott their products and protest in front of their stores carrying signs saying “Wal-Mart supports genocide against Gay and Lesbian Americans”.
