At the 15th UK–Africa Business, Trade & Investment Summit, Nelson Tugume and Perez Ochieng presented a bold redefinition of Africa’s agribusiness — shifting from raw export dependency to knowledge-based, IP-driven innovation.
Tugume’s Inspire Africa Coffee Park, a USD 1.5 billion industrialisation project backed by the Government of Uganda, aims to elevate Uganda’s coffee industry from a USD 2 billion export sector to a USD 5 billion global brand within five years.
Meanwhile, SACOMA Global Foods Innovation, under Ochieng’s leadership, is transforming African produce into globally protected food technologies and branded products, expanding across South Korea, the UK, and emerging Asian markets.
Both leaders challenged the legacy export model that leaves Africa with less than 1% of the global coffee industry’s USD 460 billion value. Inspire Africa’s industrial parks — producing soluble coffee, cosmetics, nutraceuticals, and wellness products — demonstrate how African enterprises can move up the value chain.
“We’re not just exporting coffee; we’re exporting creativity, culture, and confidence.” — Nelson Tugume
Ochieng’s SACOMA model complements this by turning knowledge into a tradable asset. Through intellectual property protection, recipe certification, and branding, African SMEs can monetise creative innovation — following the path of Asian economies that turned culture into global capital.
“Africa’s competitiveness will come not from what it grows, but from how it owns, protects, and powers its innovation.” — Perez Ochieng
Both Inspire Africa and SACOMA are anchored in Hon. Ruth Nankabirwa’s clean-energy and industrialisation framework, which ensures renewable, affordable power for agro-processing and manufacturing.
This collaboration connects:
Together, they form the foundation of Africa’s emerging “Knowledge-to-Value Economy” — where innovation, energy, and industry reinforce each other to deliver sustainable competitiveness.
Tugume’s Africa Coffee Park Smart City is not just an industrial hub but a tourism and lifestyle destination. By combining coffee culture, wellness, and creative retail, the initiative links agriculture to experience-based tourism — an idea championed by Juliana Kagwa, CEO of the Uganda Tourism Board, who described it as:
“Coffee’s tourism moment — where agribusiness meets experience.”
This integration of lifestyle, tourism, and industrialisation reflects Uganda’s broader development vision — a creative economy built on authenticity, innovation, and storytelling.
