KIT Institute is a partner in the newly launched Uganda Coffee Farmer Health Consortium, spearheaded by Elucid. The consortium brings together coffee traders, roasters, and public and philanthropic partners to improve access to healthcare for coffee-farming communities in Uganda. KIT Institute will convene the consortium’s Community of Practice.

For many coffee-farming households, illness has direct economic consequences: lost workdays, delayed harvests and debt. A baseline study in the region found that nearly half of households had put off medical care, mostly because of cost. One in four had sold their coffee early at a lower price to pay for health expenses.

The consortium responds to this by treating farmer health as a shared responsibility instead of a point of competition. Coffee companies that normally compete on price and sourcing are pooling resources to invest more than €2.5 million over three years. The investment will fund cashless access to vetted clinics and pharmacies, mobile clinics and preventive services across Greater Masaka, Ankole and Rwenzori. The programme aims to reach around 65,000 people, both farming households in the supply chain and the wider communities around them. Social enterprise Elucid is the implementation partner.

Turning evidence into practice

The consortium will also produce evidence on how access to healthcare affects farmer income, productivity, supplier loyalty and resilience. As convener of the Community of Practice, KIT Institute will bring together the participating companies, technical partners and Elucid to review findings, exchange lessons and help refine the model. The goal is to translate what is learned in Uganda into practical insights for scaling farmer health across the coffee sector.

“More and more coffee companies are choosing to invest in the health of the farmers they source from, but the evidence on what works, and what it returns, is still thin.”, says Heloise Widdig, Advisor Health Systems Strengthening. “The Community of Practice gives partners a shared place to test assumptions against real data from Uganda and to be candid about what is and isn’t working. Learning openly now is how we build models that can grow.”

The consortium’s preparatory phase started this month. The full three-year programme will launch in January 2027.

Consortium partners: Agri Evolve, Caffè Borbone, ETG, JDE Peet’s, ofi, Sucafina and Touton, together with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, HereWeGrow, UBS Optimus Foundation and KIT Institute with Elucid as implementation partner.