Tension is escalating between Uganda and Rwanda. A crisis is developing that is affecting the entire region.

Tension between Uganda and Rwanda, but also at Rwandan borders with Burundi and Congo is rising.  By end April, Canada, Germany, Belgium, France and Australia told their nationals to move cautiously in particular in the border areas.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame

On the last 7 April, during the commemoration of the genocide ceremonies, in his speech, President Paul Kagame warned that  “for those from here or from outside who think our country has not seen enough of a mess and want to mess with us, in defense of those children you saw and our nation, I want to say, we will mess up with them big time”.
The statement translated the concern in Rwanda about the attitude of the Ugandan President, Yoweri Museveni who has admitted contacts with dissidents of the Rwandan National Congress (RNC), led by General Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa. The Kigali authorities accuse Museveni to deliberately organise meetings between the RNC and rebels from the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (DFLR) which were created by former Rwandan armed forces officers involved in the genocide of the Tutsis in 1994. Kayumba has formed a coalition called P5 which includes beside his own RNC, the PS-Imberakuri and PDP-Imanzi parties, the Amahoro People Congress. and the United Democratic Forces created by Victoire Ingabire who served jail in Rwanda during eight years after a UN report revealed her links with the DFLR which are categorised as a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department.
Symptoms of tensions are visible at the border.

Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni

The Kampala Post reported by mid April that local residents on the Ugandan side were considering abandoning their border homelands to find secure areas inside the country owing to their fear that violence could break out at any time. On the 28 February 2019, Rwanda closed the Gatuna and Cyanika border posts and hundreds of cargo trucks loaded with goods were trapped in the no-man’s land between the two countries. Rwanda said the reason for the shutdown was to allow for the completion of the construction works for the One Stop Border Post, envisaged by the east African community, but Uganda spoke of a blockade.
Yet, the matter was not simply logistic. Indeed, President Kagame on the 26 March told participants to the African CEO Forum in Kigali that the problem was not about a road being constructed but about politics. Meanwhile, the Uganda press has been raising several bones of contention between both countries. According to Kampala, during several years, Rwandan security agents have kidnapped and sometimes killed dissidents who had sought refuge in Uganda. Kampala papers report that the Rwandan police shot on the 2 May on a Rwandan citizen who was trying to cross into Uganda at the Gatuna border post and that he was injured.
On the other hand, the Kigali authorities mention the persecution of Rwandan nationals. The Rwandan press mentioned several recent assassinations. According to the pro-government paper New Times, on the 15 April 2019, unknown assailants shot dead a Rwandan businessman named Lambert Sanabo, the manager of the Isimbi Wines factory in the Uganda town of Kisoro. A week before, another Rwandan citizen Theogene Dusengimana, who was working in a tea plantation in the Kabarole District, was killed, also by unknown people.

Between March and April 2019, 94 Rwandans were expelled from Uganda, after having been arrested and detained. The Kigali authorities report cases of abduction and torture of their nationals in Uganda. In March, the Rwandan Foreign Minister, Richard Sezibera said that 40 Rwandan nationals were being detained in the neighbouring country on charges of spying on behalf of Rwanda, while several Ugandan officers were arrested on charges to conspire with Kigali.
Rwanda is especially concerned by the “economic sabotage” allegedly perpetrated by Uganda which includes the blockade during five months in 2018 of two containers of coltan of the Kigali-based Mineral Supply Africa company. The Ugandan private sector is another collateral victim of this dispute. Indeed, in 2017, Ugandan exports to Rwanda amounted to $ 182 m. which is ten times the volume of Rwandan exports to Uganda. In fact, the entire region is affected. The Ethiopian Electric Power company which was planning to export up to 400 megawatts towards Rwanda cannot do so because the interconnection should cross Uganda which blocked the project.
The port of Mombassa is losing traffic from and towards Rwanda, but also from and towards Congo and Burundi. The main beneficiary of the situation is the Tanzanian port of Dar-es-Salam.

These tensions between both countries have also negative repercusssions on the Burundian border. Indeed, another coalition called the Rwandan Movement for Democratic Change which groups the DFLR and the RNC announced in 2018 the creation of an armed wing which claimed responsibility for several attacks in Southern Rwanda.
The Bujumbura authorities which are irritated by Rwanda’s decision to give asylum to political dissidents, journalists and human rights activists, are recruiting DFLR fighters whose names were published by the independent Burundian Radio-Télé Renaissance whose installations in Bujumbura were destroyed in 2015. “This is an open secret. The regime has hired DFLR members for the presidential guard” says the chief editor in exile of Radio Inzamba, Désiré Hatungimana.
In January, the Congolese Defence Minister, Crispin Atama warned the UN that DFLR rebels were planning an attack from the South Kivu province against Rwanda, which allegedly was planned by General Kayumba Nyamwasa. Such allegations confirm a UN report from December 2018 about the presence of anti-Kagame Rwandan forces in the Bijombo forrest, in South Kivu.
Several causes have been mentioned to explain these tensions. One is the frustration felt by Museveni caused by Paul Kagame’s alleged lack of gratitude after Uganda provided the Rwandan Patriotic Front with a base to organise the return of the Tutsi refugees to their country. These same circles feel also humiliated by the defeat inflicted to the Ugandan People Defence Force in 2000 during the war in the DRC by the Rwandan Patriotic Army at the battle of Kisangani. But these events are old. Therefore, the real reasons behind the current crisis are probably more related with recent events in Uganda, tells SouthWorld a President Kagame’s adviser.

Accordingly, the situation has begun to deteriorate when some people started to conspire against the presence in the Ugandan administration of  ethnic Rwandans like the Police Inspector General, Kale Kayihura, who was fired in March 2018 and replaced by Gen. Okoth Ochola, a native from the Tororo area.  According this source, Kayihura’s enemies managed to persuade Museveni, to get rid of him because the Inspector General was allegedly willing to oust him with Kigali’s support. And there are fears in Rwanda that the situation can deteriorate even further.  Rwandan military are deployed at the border while two brigades of UPDF’s second division are deployed on the other side of the border. There are fears in Kigali that Uganda which is concerned that its infantry could face problems if confronted with the Rwanda Defence Force, could launch air strikes on Kigali. For that reason, Kigali has reportedly ordered SAM surface to air missile batteries to Russia, say European defence experts.

François Misser

Bonga is one of the capitals of Ethiopian coffee. At the corner of every alleyway, one of those tiny coffee shops known as ‘buna bets’ is inevitably found. We start our journey to the deep heart of Ethiopia from this small town.

It may be a small, plain, rural sort of town but Bonga has a spirit of its own. It soon become obvious what it is all about: coffee. In Bonga, coffee, or buna, as it is called in Amharic, is everywhere. At the corner of every alleyway, one of those tiny coffee shops known as ‘buna bets’, is inevitably found. They are run by women and every day, until late in the afternoon, their terracotta coffee pots are on the boil.
In the centre of the town there is a monument to a grain of coffee: it stands in the courtyard of the coffee museum (still to be opened) in celebration of what, for the entire population, is a symbol of hope and the promise of possible riches.

Kafa is one of the areas of Ethiopia richest in coffee and Ethiopia is the largest producer of coffee in all of Africa. The local economy, based on micro-agriculture, is mainly based on coffee. Even the name of the region, Kafa, is connected to that of coffee. The Arabica coffee plant has always grown wild here in the undergrowth.
It was from here that the shrub was transplanted in the Arabian Peninsula, where, according to historical accounts, in the twelfth century, it began to be cultivated regularly. From there it was spread throughout the world by Arabic civilisation.
The best place to learn about the local coffee economy is at the Kafa Forest Coffee Farmers’ Cooperative Union. Founded in 2004 at the instigation of the government, the Union has grown year on year. Today it has 42 cooperatives scattered throughout the ten districts around the town of Bonga and is the reference point for 14,000 small and very small growers, for small producers with allotments of one hectare as well as for men and women who collect the beans from the wild trees that flourish in the forest undergrowth.

In the forecourt of Kafa Forest Coffee Farmers’ Cooperative Union, women are hard at work. Even late in the afternoon, in the shade of tin-roofed porticos, they bend over the coffee beans to sort out the bad grains from the good. Inside the barn the machinery is in constant use, bagging the beans in sacks of 60 kg. Lorries parked along the road nearby wait for their loads of coffee to take to Addis Ababa.
It is at the capital, a night’s journey distant, that the price of coffee is worked out at the stock exchange and placed on the market.
From there, the coffee for export is taken to the port of Djibouti and from there to the markets of the world.
The coffee business in Ethiopia is governed by rather centralised rules. The farmers must bring their produce to territorial collection points or to commercial agents authorised by the government. There the grains of coffee are bought at the price decided by the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX), the Ethiopian stock exchange that has regulated the coffee market since 2008. The beans are then processed in barns like that of the Kafa Forest Coffee Farmers’ Cooperative Union. Two sorts of coffee are produced. The first is sundried coffee with the beans being dried in the sun. The process is less intensive and this coffee is for the local market. Then there is the washed coffee which is considered better. It is obtained by soaking the cherries in water and then shelling them. This is more profitable coffee and is for export. It has been promoted by the government for at least fifteen years with production incentives.

For at least ten years, the coffee market has been growing in Ethiopia, the main producer of coffee grains in Africa with 40% of the continental harvest, the sixth largest in the world. According to estimates, this year 426,000 tons will be placed on the market, equivalent to 7.1 million sacks of coffee beans. The export of this product plays a key role in the economy: 232,000 tons per year pass through the port of Djibouti,  22% of the total exports of the country and 3% of the world coffee market. In fifteen years, the volume of export business has risen by 113%, also due to the rising price of coffee beans. According to the USDA (United States department of agriculture), the business is worth 897 million dollars. Ethiopian coffee is sold in Germany, Saudi Arabia, Jan and the US.
In Ethiopia, the cradle of Coffea Arabica, there are four million coffee growers. In total, the sector employs 15 million people, 15% of the population.At least 95% of production comes from small or very small holdings scattered especially throughout the region to the south-west.  They are family-managed and coffee is one of the crops that make up the domestic economy.

Give in order to live

The coffee plantations are to be found all around Bonga. Near the village of Dukra Woshi, in the shade of the rainforest, there is a private plantation of some hectares. It is surrounded by a fence. The owners were not there so the workers showed us the coffee trees. By the side of the rough road leading to Bushasa town, a man emerges from a clearing and takes us to see the small coffee trees that he has assiduously grown around his hut. He is helped by his young sons. He smiles as he strokes the bunches of beans hanging from the branches. Here the coffee trees are life itself and every village has a sacred tree to which small offerings of milk and butter are brought. This custom belongs to the traditional religion and has stood the test of time, despite the fact that the majority of the people are Orthodox Christians.

In the village of Aby we come across a market held under an enormous tree. Women and children sell coffee beans piled up in heaps on coloured cloths alongside tubers, cereals and seeds. They too proudly show us their buna. The country is simple, the people go barefoot and transport is by mule. Nevertheless, despite the poverty, one gets the impression that people are living a dignified life. With its gifts, nature guarantees subsistence but it can also bring rescue and hope.
An Ethiopian of the Menja ethnic group whom we met in the administrative area of Gina spoke to us. Historically, the Menjas were marginalised. The live isolated in small villages, hidden in the depths of the forest. Theirs is a life of poverty among the poor lived under the stigma of social prejudice that keeps them outside of and excluded from community life. They have no access to schools and their main source of income is collecting and selling firewood.

The Menja man we met is called Asfaw and says he is 55 years old. One of his hands was crippled by fire. He tells us he has eight children. Like all the Menja he lives isolated in the middle of a clearing. He continually repeats: «I would love to send my children to school ». «I would like to save up some money from what I earn from selling honey. And I would like to have my own buna cooperative. But I am a Menjan so I cannot do these things. Nobody listens to me and nobody gives me anything. If I could, I would grow coffee. Yes, this is my dream, to have a small plantation all of my own to provide a future for my children », he tells us, standing in the shade of those tall, majestic forest trees as his children listen in silence.

Marco Benedettelli – photos: Ennio Brilli