The government has been requested to officially include cocoa in the Uganda coffee development authority (UCDA) naming, in order to improve the quality and effectively promote cocoa both on the local and international markets. The plea was made during the cocoa workshop that took place in Kampala, it was attended by the member of the European Union and officials from UCDA.

 In a conversation with our reporter, Henry Lwanga who is an experienced cocoa farmer recounted that the government made a big blunder when it halted the cocoa farmer supervisors in various regions of the nation. He added, among all the moves to step up cocoa farming in Uganda, reinstituting the cocoa farmer supervisors should be prioritized.

While still dwelling on the issue of improving the quality of cocoa production in the country, they came up with rules and regulations to guide the cocoa farmers, though they held mixed feelings on the timing of the issuing of the rules and regulations. In the same way, they came up with ideas of enacting regulations at the lower levels such as parish, villages, sub-counties, districts and so forth before considering the entire nation and proposing them to the parliament.

In his submission, Diomede Cassamei Massimo EU official and an inter-trade consultant said that all east African countries chose to be supported by the EU in coffee production apart from Uganda, which chose cocoa production. Therefore the EU pledged to support cocoa farming in Uganda and ensure that the market availability, especially at the international level. More to that Diomede said that they will support Uganda to improve on the quality of the cocoa production.

However, the EU is also supporting Uganda's coffee sub-sector through the East African Community (EAC) Market Access Upgrade Programme (MARKUP). The EAC MARKUP is a four-year initiative funded by the European Union with financing from the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation (BMZ).

The programme will assist Uganda in upgrading it's coffee and cocoa value chains with a quality export perspective and with focus on smallholders.

The overarching goal of EAC MARKUP is to contribute to the economic development of the EAC region by increasing the value of both extra- and intra-regional agricultural exports, focussing on exports to the European Union.