MARA Agribusiness
MARA Agribusiness is a social enterprise and a coffee producer from Uganda, established in 2017, serving the domestic market and looking for exporting internationally. They aim to create 2500 jobs for rural Ugandan farmers and improve the overall sustainability of Ugandan coffee value chains.
They work with more than 600 youth farmers, providing them a stable crop-off-take. Beside coffee production, they supply more than 5000 rural farmers with high quality, affordable agricultural inputs through five wholesale MARA Agro Stores (Kamuli, Luwero, Masaka, Mayuge and Mityana towns), provide training, consulting services and establish coffee farms.
MARA's Aramah coffee
MARA’s Aramah is a premium quality coffee with no additives or flavourings.
They offer three types of coffee:
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arabica (beans and powder)
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robusta (beans and powder)
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Aramah Blend (arabica and robusta coffee).
Both Uganda’s Elgon region and Lake Victoria’s shores, where MARA grows their robusta and arabica, are known for their rich sandy-loam volcanic soils, high biodiversity and coffee production in the past.
MARA's social and environmental impacts
MARA Agribusiness creates significant social impact among Ugandan youth farmers and ensures that the Ugandan coffee industry has a bright future. In 2020, they trained 400 young field officers and sales agents. Together with Jacobs Douwe Egberts (JDE) they have implemented the MARA Coffee Advisory Project, through which they will train even more young field officers, agents and advisors across Uganda.
Since 2021, Mara Agribusiness has been sponsored by GIZ and their Coffee Innovation Fund (CIF), which makes coffee processing more accessible to rural farmers by bringing mobile coffee pulping stations to farmers in Mityana district. The initiative is expected to create 175 jobs for young farmers and increase income for 1650 smallholder farmers. Due to mobile processing units, the transportation of the produce to processing facilities is not needed, which contributes positively to the environment.
