Imports of cheap crude palm stifle Uganda's oilseed farming
According to recent Customs data, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda spent $2.2 billion on crude vegetable oil imports between 2013 and 2015. Kenya led with imports of $1.14 billion, followed by Tanzania and Uganda at $604 million and $462.3 million respectively. FOTOSEARCH
The Kazimingi area of Jinja, once designated as Uganda’s industrial hub, is today a shell of rusty disused oil mills and crumbling buildings — testimony to a bygone era, when smallholder farmers prospered by growing cotton and other oil seeds to feed the mills.
Kazimingi is just one of the many ghost towns spread all over Uganda — towns that were built around an oil seed industry that no longer exists. Since the early 1980s, Uganda has been struggling to revive its vegetable oil industry to satisfy both immediate consumer demand and revive a domestic value chain.
