By Kyetume Kasanga
As part of Government strategy to support value addition and empower rural sugarcane growers, President Yoweri Museveni has announced plans to buy Mayuge Sugar Factory for farmers in Busoga subregion, eastern Uganda. Mayuge Sugar Industries Ltd, a subsidiary of Jinja-based Maheswaris & Patels Group of Companies (M&P Group) is selling the factory.
The President’s move is to ensure equity in the sugar sector and deliver profits directly to the producers. He made the announcement when he met sugarcane growers and millers from across the country at Kityerera State Lodge in Mayuge district on Tuesday, August 5, 2025. Farmers in other parts of the country are also asking for a similar announcement.
There are 19 sugar factories in the county, including Kinyara, Kiryandongo, Hoima, Bwendero and Kyenjojo in western Uganda. Others are Mayuge, Sugar Corporation of Uganda, Kakira, Kaliro, Sezibwa, GM, Buikwe, Kamuli, Bugiri and Busia in eastern Uganda, and Sango Bay and Victoria in Central Uganda.
Atiak and Amuru in northern Uganda are not yet operational but the 17 operational factories churn out a combined total of about 600,000 metric tons of sugar annually. The out grower who produces nearly 70%, the bulk of the sugarcane requirements, is not protected.
Statistics indicate that the sugar value chain employs over 135,000 people and generates close to Shs550bn in annual tax revenues. For the smallholder farmers, sugarcane farming remains an enviable source of household income and economic resilience.
The President in May this year assented to the Sugar (Amendment) Act, 2025 that Parliament passed on 15th April to improve the industry. The new law now provides a better environment for the farmer. This includes a better pricing formula, removing the 5% trash charge that millers hitherto levied on the farmer and favoring the farmer in revenue sharing with the miller from sugar sales.
While the Government’s intervention is timely, there are underlying issues that shouldn’t be overlooked. Sometime back, the partially government-owned New Vision newspaper exposed a scandal of over Shs8bn loss and tax evasion at one of the big sugar factories in our midst.
Attempting to conceal the malpractice, the company Management intercepted and bought all the day’s copies of The New Vision off the streets. This is just a tip of the iceberg in the sugar industry.
The largely unimplemented National Sugar Policy that Cabinet approved several years ago regards the contracts that the millers make farmers sign as non-binding and lopsided to the miller. The farmers’ interests are not protected because the same contracts are still being signed and enforced religiously.
Circumstances force the farmer to get a company loan through field survey, chain felling, tree removal, earth field roads grading, first and second plough, first and second harrow, mechanical covering and inter-row cultivation.
There is also provision of seed and gapping cane, fertilizers, agronomy extension services, and cane cutting, loading and transportation. The company recovers the principal and interest all at once from the value of the sugarcane that reaches the factory. Spills along the way are not their business but collected just to clear the roads of rubbish.
When wildfires consume the plantation before it’s ready for harvesting the farmer loses the entire season of 15 or so months. However, the loan continues running until the cane sprouts afresh, matures and is harvested. If it is burnt again, the loss cycle recurs as interest on the loan accumulates.
Many wild fires occur and the company sometimes helps put them out but at its discretion and at the farmer’s cost. This is not covered in the agreement. Quite often due to staff negligence, sugarcane fields burn even when they could have been salvaged.
In fact, thrice or so, some rogue managers rejected appeals to save famers’ burning plantations until they realized that it was actually company fields afire that they deployed graders and water bowsers.
After such fires, unscrupulous staff approach unsuspecting and gullible farmers offering to save them from further losses in costs of cutting down and throwing away the burnt cane. They harvest the cane, do not pay for it but sell it to the company in other registered farmers’ names for themselves.
The real danger is that such scoundrels may monitor farmers’ plantations and cause wildfires on them in order to reap the said benefits. The loss cycle to the farmer continues spiraling.
At the weigh bridge, it’s the miller (buyer) who represents the farmer (seller) to tell the load that the miller should pay to the farmer. It’s like being a judge in your own case. Most times the farmer runs into negative receipts and should wait for the next harvest to earn a profit.
The cane price formula never considers sugarcane byproducts as another revenue stream for the farmer. The byproducts include bagasse which is used for power generation and paper production, and molasses for animal feeds and ethanol production.
Other byproducts are ethanol itself a biofuel for various applications, bioplastics, press mud cake for compost or organic fertilizers, and sugarcane vinasse for spirits and sanitizers, among others.
Since one of the eight objectives of the National Sugar Policy is to establish a sector regulatory mechanism to oversee, monitor and arbitrate major issues concerning the sugar sector, the incoming Sugar Council should have all these issues in mind and protect the farmer from unnecessary exploitation.
Financial support and other affordable services available to the farmer should be prioritized. Sugar processing companies should extend insured packages to sugarcane growers to help them recover in case of vagaries and other catastrophes. Kyetume Kasanga is a retired Ag Assistant Commissioner for Information Monitoring/Secretary to the Media Council of Uganda, and now a farmer in Masindi district. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
