Ugandan Khat Production Spreads

Abstract

From the 1930s to the 1980s, Yemeni and Somali migrants and their descendants taught indigenous Ugandans about khat. They stimulated khat production in Mount Elgon, in Karamoja, and in Kabarole District. Khat is now grown commercially in most parts of the country, and wild khat is still harvested in the southwest and northeast of Uganda. Since the 1980s new khat harvesting and cultivation enterprises have sprung up in places such as Arua and Lira in the north, started by entrepreneurs who learned about khat from other indigenous Ugandans. The khat produced in these areas comes from stock taken from the wild or, in the case of Arua, from the national botanical gardens at Entebbe. However, the biggest khat production areas are in the south, in the central districts of Uganda, with khat from Butambala and Kasenge supplying the Kampala market and beyond. These khat production areas are part of the kingdom of Buganda, where important traditional crops were, and are, plantains and coffee (NARO, 2001).