Uganda: Direct Sales Give Eastern Uganda’s Cotton Farmers a Stronger Hand

Cotton farmers in eastern Uganda are bypassing village middlemen and selling collectively or directly to ginneries. The emerging model is giving growers greater control over weighing, payment and market access – and helping women turn seasonal cotton earnings into education, land, homes and productive assets.

When Nighty Acen sold her cotton directly to Iki-Iki Cotton Ginnery in neighbouring Pallisa District, the change was about more than finding a buyer.

It meant avoiding village middlemen who, she says, offered farmers low prices and sometimes used poorly maintained weighing scales. The income from cotton helped Acen build an iron-roofed house, contribute to her son’s marriage and buy oxen.

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The animals have become productive assets. Acen uses them to prepare her own fields on time and earns additional income by clearing land for other farmers.

“Dealing with middlemen in the cotton business was frustrating, but since I started selling directly, I have built a house with an iron-sheet roof, helped my son get married, and bought oxen that have improved my farming,” says Acen, who farms in Pondwong in Kachonga Sub-county.

Her experience points to a potentially important shift in eastern Uganda’s cotton trade. Farmers are organising sales through groups, cooperatives and direct relationships with ginneries in an effort to secure known buyers, reduce losses between the farm and the ginnery and retain more of the value of each harvest.

The shift is taking place within a cotton industry that supports an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 smallholder households across more than 75 Ugandan districts. According to an August 2025 African Development Bank project document , Uganda produced approximately 1.22 million bales over the decade to 2023/24, generating UGX1.045 trillion in farmer income and more than US$348 million in lint exports. Northern Uganda remains the country’s main production hub, followed by the Eastern Region.

For women, who have traditionally supplied much of the labour in cotton fields without always controlling the sale, participation in marketing can also increase their influence over how the income is used.

The emerging model is not yet a solution to all the pressures facing cotton growers. Unreliable rain, pests, poor-performing seed, production costs and changing prices continue to shape what farmers earn. But direct market access is giving some growers greater control over the part of the business that begins once the cotton leaves the field.

From field labour to market decisions

Cotton has long been a cash crop in Uganda’s rural economy. Its seasonal payment can meet expenses that are difficult to cover through food crops consumed at home or sold in small quantities.

Women have always worked across labour-intensive stages of production, including land preparation, planting, weeding, picking, carrying and sorting. Marketing and price negotiations, however, were often handled by men.

Jude Ongota, the principal agricultural officer in Bukedea District, says women are now taking a more visible role in organised cotton production and are also involving their husbands.

“We thank women because they have spearheaded this initiative and included their husbands to help in growing cotton, unlike before, when women did the donkey work,” Ongota says.

Aleje Modesta, a commercial farmer in Bukedea, has grown cotton for nearly 30 years. She began with a small plot and the immediate goal of feeding her family, before expanding her production through a relationship with Lukonge Cotton Company Ltd.

Modesta says the company provided improved seed, technical support and a market for her crop. Cotton income has allowed her to acquire land and pay school costs.

“When I started farming, my goal was simply to earn money and be able to feed my family. I never imagined cotton growing would become the crop that would transform our life and my family,” she says.

“Farming has enabled me to buy land, educate my children, and build a better future for my family.”

Her story is less about a sudden transformation in cotton farming than about what becomes possible when a grower can expand over time and has a route to market.

Cotton remains demanding work. It is primarily rain-fed and generally grown once a year. Farmers prepare land, plant and weed largely by hand, control pests and pick the crop over several weeks before receiving a seasonal payment.

“Every stage of cotton farming, from preparing the fields before the rains to picking by hand, is hard work all the way,” Modesta says. “But when we see those white fibres bursting from the bolls, we know money has arrived.”

Aggregating cotton, not selling alone

Individual farmers often have limited leverage when a trader arrives in a village. Aggregating cotton through a group can produce a larger consignment, make a direct sale more practical and give farmers a collective voice in discussions with buyers.

Uganda’s wider cotton-development plans reflect the same logic. The AfDB document identifies market access and price stabilisation through cooperatives as important incentives for smallholder participation. It also argues that stronger farmer organisations can help growers negotiate more favourable prices and gain better access to markets.

The Wawot-Anyim Cotton Farmers Group has developed a working relationship with Lukonge Cotton Company Ltd. The group has 90 members, according to its storekeeper, Lalam Sabina. Twenty-eight grow cotton: 10 women and 18 men.

Lalam, who has farmed cotton since 2010, says the group allows members to market their harvest together instead of negotiating separately.

“Wawot-Anyim has helped to strengthen collective bargaining to have a better market for cotton farmers,” she says.

Hellen Acham, chairperson of the Pallisa Farmers Association, says its formal agreement with Lukonge has given participating farmers more certainty about where they can sell.

That certainty matters because farmers incur costs for months before earning anything from the crop. Knowing the intended buyer before planting can help a household decide how much land and labour to commit.

Moses Stephen Opedule, who has farmed for more than 10 years, says a cooperative marketing arrangement could also reduce the risk of delayed payment.

“This new development shall help members of the cooperative to be sure of a ready market and price stability for the cotton being produced, because before we have been selling cotton on credit, which is the most hurting,” he says.

Direct access does not remove production risk

A confirmed buyer cannot purchase a crop that farmers have been unable to plant or that performs poorly in the field.

Hellen Ongaya, a farmer in Malera Town Council, says delayed rain disrupted her planting plans.

“Much as we sell cotton directly to the ginnery, this year my plan for growing cotton has been affected because up to now I have not planted cotton because the rain has not been there,” she says.

In her area, she says, planting would normally take place between mid-March and April. Some farmers planted despite the poor rain, while others waited for sufficient moisture.

Florence Kadega, a farmer in Kachumbala Sub-county in Bukedea, has grown cotton since 2008. She says she earned more than UGX12 million (approximately US$3,150) from one harvest.

That past return demonstrates the scale cotton can reach for an established farmer, but Kadega says declining yields have since reduced earnings.

She attributes the decline she has experienced to poor-quality seed, high production costs and price fluctuations. Poor roads, she adds, make it harder and more expensive to move cotton from farms to buyers.

Kadega wants government support to improve roads and farmers’ access to quality seed and inputs. These measures would complement direct marketing: a better buyer relationship can improve the terms of sale, but productivity and transport determine how much cotton reaches that buyer and at what cost.

Quality links the farm to the export market

Henry Kodaki Ojaro, secretary manager of the East Acholi Cooperative Union, says the price Uganda’s cotton attracts is influenced by international markets and the quality of its lint.

“Cotton is like gold, where the price is determined by the international market, depending on production from world-leading cotton-producing countries like China, Egypt and the United States of America,” he says.

Quality matters especially because Uganda continues to export most of its cotton before it is transformed locally. In 2023/24, according to the AfDB document, 93% of the country’s cotton was exported as raw lint and only about 7% was processed domestically. The document counted 18 ginners, 26 ginneries, 13 cottonseed processors, six cotton-wool producers and two vertically integrated textile mills.