Uganda’s tea lady Juliet Ntwirenabo is a product of her country’s fledgling enterprise economy. Anne Bruce met her on a visit to England. Accrediting a tea farm as organic is a lengthy and complicated process, even if the farm in question has never had the funds to buy those alluring but forbidden chemical pesticides. Juliet Ntwirenabo, Uganda’s leading tea farmer, is still unsure if it is worth going down the green route: will the buyers at the auctions in Mombasa, where her collective’s tea is sold every week, even want organic leaves? The chairman of the Igara Growers Tea Factory, one of four grower partnerships operating in Uganda and Tanzania from which Tea Direct sources its leaves, is considering persuasive arguments to take the risk put forward by the Fairtrade organisation which buys a percentage of her collective’s produce. Ntwirenabo is taking her time. After all, she did not make her mark through snap business decisions or trusting buyers, however ethical, for impartial advice. She has her eye on the future: she wants to increase capacity, build a second factory and double farmers’ incomes and doesn’t know how becoming organic will affect that. Generally, trading conditions are tough ­ supplies of tea in Uganda exceed demand, and buyers can drive down prices on the open market to an extent which compromises the viability of the farms. But as part of its role as a Fairtrade organisation, Tea Direct’s mission is to establish mutually beneficial relationships with producers, and the organisation’s intervention guarantees a minimum price for a set amount of produce, regardless of fluctuations in the world market. Ntwirenabo joined the board of directors of the Igara Growers’ Tea Factory in 1995, and is the only woman board member among Uganda’s four privatised tea factories. She is also an example of the socio-economic change that the current one-party government is legislating towards in its drive to restore Uganda after years of political unrest. In 1993 the government began to encourage women to plant their own tea gardens when it put its four state owned factories, including Igara, up for sale. Ntwirenabo was then already a smallholder and was elected to the consultative committee of six to oversee the privatisation which eventually took place in 1995. She says: “The smallholders were asked to fill share subscription forms and pay one share, which cost 5,000 Uganda shillings (£1.95) to become an eligible shareholder. That was done and our first general meeting elected directors.” Ntwirenabo is now in a unique position as a chairman who is a woman, but when she started out 10 years ago her goal was modest ­ it was to tame the hectare of land she held and live off the proceeds. She began growing tea and other crops to feed her husband, her own four children and three who were left destitute after her brother-in-law died of Aids. At the time, and until 1997, she was a senior accountant in the Ugandan government department of education and sports. In comparison with her fellow smallholders Ntwirenabo is highly educated, with A-levels and a higher diploma in accountancy. But it was her years of hard graft as a tea farmer which, she says, earned her a place on the board. Her small mixed farm won Ministry of Agriculture prizes annually, from 1993 to 1997, and Ntwirenabo was voted the best tea farmer in the western region ­ an area dominated by coffee crops. She was eventually nominated the best tea farmer in Uganda and then found her farm was being visited by other growers who wanted to understand how she worked. The Fairtrade Foundation’s tea merchant, Traidcraft recently flew her to the UK for a week’s stay to celebrate its 21st birthday. She met tea buyers from Sainsbury, visited a tea packing company in Dartford, and received acclaim for the tea from the Igara plantations from consumers. One elderly woman customer in Sainsbury’s, an aficionado of the Tea Direct brand, even told her it was the best cup she had ever tasted. Ntwirenabo admits she was amazed that she should have been approached in a supermarket so far from her home, and that her collective’s product was so recognisable, let alone desirable, in the UK. A picture of the Igara plantations appears on the tea’s packs on UK shelves. In fact, the collective’s farms are on scattered plots across a 1,600 hectare estate and have little in the way of a communications network. Tea is picked by hand every day, and then carried by the individual growers, on their heads, to the Igara factory. After the leaves have been processed they are transported to Mombasa for auction. However, the poor quality tracks and paths and the constrains of the rocky terrain is holding back the development of the business, because the factory is inaccessible to large vehicles. Ntwirenabo, along with the rest of the Igara tea growers, lives hand to mouth, although improvements to their standard of living have been made through dealing with Fairtrade. But progress can be a case of one step forward, two steps back as the spread of Aids continues to devastate the population. She says that almost every family in her region has lost a member to it. Children are being farmed out among relatives, in a country where the extended family is uncommon. She took on three of her brother-in-law’s 12 children when he died from the disease and she admits the extra mouths to feed put a strain on her resources. But her situation is the Igaran reality. Poverty and hunger are so common they’re rarely a talking point and each community family is caring for an average of 10 children. There is no welfare state in Uganda. “In this country you need a ranch because the government does not look after us ­ we have to live on our savings,” she says. In her position as chairman of the growers’ association, Ntwirenabo is channelling Tea Direct premiums into projects to improve life for the mountain community. When she began working with Tea Direct, the collective opened a separate account to fund development projects. The committee examined the concerns of the scattered mountain dwellers and chose to target four of the most pressing issues: education, roads, health and water. “In two years the community has seen improvements in all those areas,” she says. Ntwirenabo made it a priority to address a desperate need for a health care centre for expectant mothers. Women were dying in childbirth because they could not manage the journey across treacherous terrain to the regional hospital if complications set in. A health centre with a clinic and three beds was built despite opposition from some members of the Igara board, whose wives, she points out, were no longer of child bearing age. Ntwirenabo, who is 38, won the committee over with her plea to protect family units in the light of the knock-on effects of the crumbling of family life caused by the Aids epidemic which is sweeping Africa. The families of 150 casual workers who make Igara’s two million kilos of “made tea” (the finished product) a year have been given books, pens and paper for their children. Ntwirenabo explains that the supplies of educational materials for producers are limited ­ each was given 20 books, five pens and five pencils to last the family a year. With the new clinic in great demand, improvements to the road transport network are next on the agenda. Improvements to the water supply are already in hand to ensure a safe source of drinking water. One protected spring has been set up and the collective is saving up for a second. So the Igara growers are beginning to see the results of their toil with Uganda’s second biggest export (the first is coffee), but the country as a whole is, by no stretch of the imagination, stable. In the aftermath of the dictatorship of Idi Amin and his overthrow in a military coup 14 years ago, rebel activity and border struggles rumble on and the government recently issued a very public threat to crack down on dissident activity. Social divisions seem insurmountable and unrest continues between Christians and Muslims. The peace of the English speaking ex-British colony at the source of the Nile still depends on a heavy military presence. And Ntwirenabo herself is not immune to the social and religious divisions. When I ask her if she is a believer in either of the religions, she replies that she is Christian and speaks English, unlike the “heathen” Muslims whom, she says, do not care about educating their children, and only want to make money out of them. {{PROFILE }}

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