Algeria has opened its market to Ugandan milk and coffee.
The opportunity will see its agricultural products on the shelves of one of the biggest middle-class markets on the African continent.
Watchdog News website has been reliably informed that powered milk worth US$500 million will be exported to Algeria per year. The deal is in its final stages. Algeria has been importing its milk from Poland and Argentina.
This website understands that Uganda’s president Mr Yoweri Museveni personally wrote to the Algerian government to interest them in Ugandan food products.
The move culminated in the visit of the former Algerian Foreign Affairs minister Sabri Boukadoum who during his meeting with President Museveni in May 2021 announced that Algeria was opening the market for Uganda.
When contacted, Uganda’s envoy to Algiers, Mr Alintuma Nsambu who is one of the architects of these efforts, confirmed the developments. He said, “The trade would be booming had the Covid-19 pandemic not slowed down the process”.
The Algerian market is hard to penetrate. Watchdog News understands that Uganda’s embassy in Algeria in collaboration with the Algerian embassy in Kampala have aggressively pushed for this development.
The Algerian Envoy in Kampala H.E. Farid BOULANBEL and Nsambu in Algiers have finalized negotiations with the Algerian government to give Uganda these import slots.
The development is music to the ears of Uganda dairy farmers who will benefit from this market after the country registered surplus milk in the past couple of years, while at the same time neighbouring Kenya attempted to restrict its market from Ugandan milk products.
The opening of the North African country market is a breath of fresh air for the ever-growing Ugandan milk production capacity – it is also an opportunity to grow its capacity to milk to a more sophisticated market.
Uganda has some of the healthiest milk in the world because of its low cholesterol levels.
The opening of the Algeria market for milk and coffee is one of the commercial diplomacy efforts by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs through its Embassies. Commercial diplomacy is one of the emphases of Uganda’s recent foreign policy directives, as the country pushes its diplomats from being contented with wine and beer diplomatic cocktails.
The US$500 million milk deal aside, Algeria has already started importing Ugandan coffee. Vietnam has been their source of coffee. Uganda has been exporting six containers of coffee per week to Algeria since two months ago.
Algeria has a coffee market of more than US2 billion which Uganda can grab a piece of – if the country maintains and improves its quality and other deliverables.
Among coffee export companies the Ugandan embassy in Algiers has helped to enter the Algerian market include Grain Pulse in Bugolobi and Louis Dreyfus co. Ltd in Namanve. The Ugandan companies are projected to export coffee worth US$1 billion per year.
Uganda’s ambassador in Algiers Mr Alintuma Nsambu called upon Ugandans to take advantage of the opportunity for Ugandan milk and coffee exporters.
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