Lifestyle
In coffee-producing Uganda, an emerging sisterhood wants more women involved
SIRONKO, Uganda (AP) — Meridah Nandudu envisioned a coffee sisterhood in Uganda, and the strategy for expanding it was simple: Pay a higher price per kilogram when a female grower took the beans to a collection point.
It worked. More and more men who typically made the deliveries allowed their wives to go instead.
Nandudu’s business group now includes more than 600 women, up from dozens in 2022. That’s about 75% of her Bayaaya Specialty Coffee’s pool of registered farmers in this mountainous area of eastern Uganda that produces prized arabica beans and sells to exporters.
“Women have been so discouraged by coffee in a way that, when you look at (the) coffee value chain, women do the donkey work,” Nandudu said. But when the coffee is ready for selling, men step in to claim the proceeds.
Her goal is to reverse that trend in a community where coffee production is not possible without women’s labor.
Uganda is one of Africa’s top two coffee producers, and the crop is its leading export. The east African country exported more than 6 million bags of coffee between September 2023 and August 2024, accounting for $1.3 billion in earnings, according to the Uganda Coffee Development Authority.
The earnings have been rising as production dwindles in Brazil, the world’s top coffee producer, which faces unfavorable drought conditions.
In Sironko district, where Nandudu grew up in a remote village near the Kenya border, coffee is the community’s lifeblood. As a girl, when she was not at school, she helped her mother and other women look after acres of coffee plants. They usually planted, weeded and toiled with the post-harvest routine that includes pulping, fermenting, washing and drying the coffee.
The harvest season was known to coincide with a surge in cases of domestic violence, she said. Couples fought over how much of the earnings that men brought home from sales — and how much they didn’t.
“When (men) go and sell, they are not accountable. Our mothers cannot ask, ‘We don’t have food at home. You sold coffee. Can you pay school fees for this child?’” she said.
Years later, Nandudu earned her degree in the social sciences from Uganda’s top public university in 2015, with her father funding her education from coffee earnings. She had the idea to launch a company that would prioritize the needs of coffee-producing women in the country’s conservative society.
She thought of her project as a kind of sisterhood and chose “bayaaya” — a translation in the Lumasaba language — for her company’s name.
It launched in 2018, operating like others that buy coffee directly from farmers and process it for export.
But Bayaaya is unique in Mbale, the largest city in eastern Uganda, for focusing on women and for initiatives such as a cooperative saving society that members can contribute to and borrow from.
For small-holder Ugandan farmers in remote areas, a small movement in the price of a kilogram of coffee is a major event. The decision to sell to one or another middleman often hinges on small price differences.
A decade ago, the price of coffee bought by a middleman from a Ugandan farmer was roughly 8,000 Uganda shillings, or just over $2 at today’s exchange rate. Now the price is roughly $5.
Nandudu adds an extra 200 shillings to the price of every kilogram she buys from a woman. It’s enough of an incentive that more women are joining. Another benefit is a small bonus payment during the off-season from February to August.
That motivates many local men “to trust their women to sell coffee,” Nandudu said. “When a woman sells coffee, she has a hand in it.”
Nandudu’s group has many collection points across eastern Uganda, and women trek to them at least twice a week. Men are not turned away.
Selling as a Bayaaya member has fostered teamwork as her family collectively decides how to spend coffee earnings, said Linet Gimono, who joined the group in 2022.
And with assured earnings, she’s able to afford the “small things” she often needs as a woman. “I can buy soap (and) I can buy sugar without pulling ropes with my husband over it,” she said.
Another member, Juliet Kwaga, said her mother never would have thought of collecting coffee earnings because her father was very much in charge.
Now, Kwaga’s husband, with a bit of encouragement, is comfortable sending her. “At the end of the day I go home with something to feed my family, to support my children,” she said.
In Sironko district, home to more than 200,000 people, coffee trees dot the hilly terrain. Much of the farming is on plots of one or two acres, although some families have larger tracts.
Many farmers don’t usually drink coffee, and some have never tasted it. Some women smiled in embarrassment when asked what it tasted like.
But things are slowly changing. Routine coffee drinkers are emerging among younger women in the coffee business in urban areas, including at a roasting place in Mbale where most employees are women.
Phoebe Nabutale, who helps oversee quality assurance for Darling Coffee, was raised in a family of coffee growers. She bent over the roaster, smelling the beans until she got the aroma she wanted.
Many of her girlfriends, she said, regularly ask how they can break into the coffee business, as roasters or otherwise.
For Nandudu, who aims to start exporting beans, that’s progress.
Now there are more women in “coffee as a business,” she said.
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For more on Africa and development: https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse
The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
LONDON (AP) — “Doctor Who” and Eurovision unite for an evening of music and intergalactic adventure on Saturday — all thanks to Russell T Davies.
Before fans tune in for the annual song contest, they can enjoy Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor and Varada Sethu’s Belinda Chandra attending the Interstellar Song Contest in an episode of the sci-fi series.
In real life, the Eurovision Song Contest is an annual musical competition and TV event that sees 37 countries compete for a crystal microphone trophy over a four-hour live broadcast. In the interstellar version, aliens from 40 different worlds vie to win, also by singing.
Davies says it took three years to pull it off the doubleheader because they had to work with the BBC to set the schedule and storylines in stone to ensure a perfect alignment.
Britain’s Sam Ryder took a “Space Man” to Eurovision before, in 2022. Now, Gatwa will read out the U.K.’s jury scores during the song contest’s grand final, held this year in Basel, Switzerland.
Talking to The Associated Press, Davies says that both Eurovision and “Doctor Who” share the DNA of old-fashioned Saturday night television, making the combination “irresistible.”
This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.
AP: Do you feel that Eurovision and “Doctor Who” naturally share a kind of fandom?
DAVIES: I almost think every episode of “Doctor Who” is a great big celebration, sort of noise and color and spectacle, and that sums up Eurovision as well. In pitching this to Disney+ as well it’s like, “Look we’re going out in 60 of your territories” and Eurovision itself has a viewing figure that some years is bigger than the Super Bowl. There’s not many shows that can say that on planet Earth.
AP: How much fun did you have with the lore of Eurovision?
DAVIES: It’s enormous fun. It could be said if you’ve never seen a single Eurovision Song Contest in your life, you can still come along and watch this. It’s the kind of thing we’d have made up for a “Doctor Who” story anyway.
One day I’ll do that “ABBA Voyage” story where the holograms come to life and start killing people. That’s the best idea ever. We’ve got to do that one then. Can you imagine? That would be just amazing. I think there might be some copyright problems with that but we’d overcome them.
The actual pitch for the story to Juno (Dawson), who wrote it, was Eurovision meets “Die Hard.” So as you will see, the moment it starts, there’s trouble, someone’s out to sabotage it. There are villains behind the scenes trying to disrupt the program. All chaos is let loose and the rest of the episode is spent saving people’s lives after that.
AP: How about the songs?
DAVIES: I think there’s four songs in total (by Murray Gold). Obviously we don’t get to all 40 planets with their songs, but it was a very big production. We had to hive this off into its own production unit. There are scenes in the television gallery, where 40 different monitors have output of 40 different screens. And that’s all been fed in live. That’s not done with green screen afterwards, that’s all stuff they’d already shot. Crowds, acts, rehearsals, backstage, presenters, all of that stuff, playing onto that set, so it’s terribly complicated.
“Doctor Who” showrunner Russell T. Davies explains why an intergalactic spin on the Eurovision Song Contest was an irresistible storyline for Season 2’s May 17 episode. (May 13)
AP: Is this the most expensive episode of “Doctor Who”?
DAVIES: Frankly, they’re all expensive. It was a lot, yes. It had to be planned very far in advance, more than any. Once you plan something carefully, then it costs less just because you’re not busking. We allocate each story more or less the same amount of money. So I think it ends up costing as much as the others, but it just looks so good because they had so much time to plan it.
AP: Am I allowed to ask how much an episode normally costs?
DAVIES: We never say that. I don’t know why, but we just don’t ever do it. I don’t think they’d tell me. I’d faint.
This image released by Disney shows Christina Rotondo from “Doctor Who” Season 2. (BBC Studios/Disney/Bad Wolf via AP)
AP: Are you planning to watch Eurovision this year?
DAVIES: Yes, I will be. This will be a great night. I always sit and watch “Doctor Who” — I’m old-fashioned — on its old-fashioned BBC One transmission at 7 o’clock at night.
I know people who have Eurovision parties, which I’ve never gone to actually. Look at my life, it’s devoted to television. I can’t bear other people talking over it. That would just be a nightmare. So I will be sitting in. I’ll get some nice dinner. I’ll be a very happy man.
AP: Have you got any favorites for this year?
DAVIES: I would like to go on a date with the man from Cyprus (Theo Evan). He’s beautiful. I do like the U.K. entry this year (“What the Hell Just Happened?” by Remember Monday). I have a theory it’s being underestimated in Great Britain. Just because we’re so used to losing. We’ve won five times, everyone. But this country gets a bit cynical about Eurovision sometimes. But I love our song. I think it’s got a very memorable chorus.
U.S. retail egg prices fell in April from the record-high prices they hit earlier this year, according to government data released Tuesday.
The average price for a dozen Grade A eggs declined to $5.12 last month after reaching a record $6.23 in March, according to the Consumer Price Index. It was the first month-to-month drop in egg prices since October 2024.
Overall, the average price of eggs of all sizes fell 12.7%, the steepest monthly decline since March 1984.
While wholesale egg prices have been coming down for a while, it was unclear how much store prices would decrease in April because consumer demand is usually high around Easter and Passover.
Still, retail egg prices remain near historic highs as a persistent outbreak of bird flu wipes out flocks of egg-laying hens. The April average price for a dozen large eggs was 79% higher than the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported for the same month a year ago, when the price averaged $2.86 per dozen.
Bird flu has killed more than 169 million birds since early 2022. Any time a bird gets sick, the entire flock is killed to help keep bird flu from spreading. Once a flock is slaughtered, it can take as long as a year to clean a farm and raise new birds to egg-laying age.
That can have an effect on the egg supply because massive egg farms may have millions of birds. Outbreaks on two farms in Ohio and South Dakota last month affected more than 927,000 egg-laying hens.
Lowering egg prices has been a particular focus of President Donald Trump. In February, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it would invest $1 billion to help farmers improve their biosecurity measures to fight bird flu.
The U.S. has also increased imports of eggs from South Korea, Turkey, Brazil and other countries. According to Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute Sector Manager Kevin Bergquist, the volume of egg and egg product imports increased 77.5% during the first three months of the year compared to the same period a year ago.
The antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice is also investigating Cal-Maine Foods, the largest U.S. egg producer, which supplies around 20% of America’s eggs. Cal-Maine confirmed the investigation in early April..
Ridgeland, Mississippi-based Cal-Maine said its net income more than tripled to $508.5 million in its most recent quarter, which ended March 1.
For many, the return of the spring garden brings with it a sneezy, itchy, foggy-headed feeling that hits the moment a warm breeze stirs up invisible trouble. I’m fortunate not to suffer much, but my blue car turned a chartreuse shade of yellow last week, and a $32 car wash provided results that lasted only two hours. Sigh.
These seasonal allergies often go by the old-fashioned name hay fever, but it’s not the hay that causes misery for so many, it’s the pollen.
And not just any pollen, but the nearly weightless kind that floats up our noses and engages our immune systems. Trees, weeds, grasses and even some of our favorite flowers are culprits.
But pollen isn’t all bad. It’s essential to the reproduction of plants, the survival of insects and the entire food web. We humans could not survive without it, so we absolutely shouldn’t avoid high-pollen plants as a general rule. However, if you’re an allergy sufferer who has had to forgo planting a garden due to health reasons, plants that release the least pollen may enable you to smell the flowers.
Plants that might bring sneezes
Allergy-inducing plants are those that rely on wind rather than bees or butterflies to spread their pollen. Ragweed, which strikes in late summer and early fall, gets the most notoriety, but its springtime counterparts can be at least as irritating.
Trees most likely to cause symptoms include birch (Betula), catawba (Catalba), cypress (Cupressus), elm (Ulmus), hickory/pecan (Carya), oak (Quercus), sycamore (Platanus) and walnut (Juglans), according to the Ogren Plant Allergy Scale (OPALS), created by horticulturist Thomas Ogren and published in his 2020 book, “The Allergy-Fighting Garden.”
This article is part of AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health. Read more Be Well.
Palm trees, too — but only the males. In fact, female trees don’t produce pollen at all, so seek them out when possible.
Grasses can irritate eyes and sinuses, too. The scale ranks Bermuda (except sterile male varieties), Johnson, Kentucky, orchard, sweet vernal and timothy grasses among the highest for allergens.
Weeds like ragweed, curly dock, lamb’s quarters, pigweed, plantain, sheep sorrel and sagebrush are also big pollen producers, Ogren found.
Not all plants are irritating to allergy sufferers
On the other hand, plants with “double” flowers or heavier pollen that doesn’t travel far are less likely to release much pollen.
Among trees, apricot (Prunus armeniaca), fig (Ficus), fir (Abies), fruiting pear (Pyrus), fruiting plum (Prunus domestica, Prunus insititia), redbud (Cerus), serviceberry (Amelanchier laevis), female ash (Fraxinus), female box elder (Acer negundo), female cottonwood/poplar (Populus), female maple (Acer), female palm (Arecaceae) and female willow (Salix) are easier on the respiratory system.
St. Augustine and sterile male Bermuda are safer bets in the grass department.
As for flowers, you’ve got options: Begonia, female clematis, columbine, crocus, daffodil, delphinium, hibiscus, impatiens, iris, bird of paradise, pansy, petunia, phlox, poppy, snapdragon, tulip, verbena and zinnia are friends. Roses, too — especially tightly packed, dense-petaled varieties, which exude even less pollen than those with single or semi-double flowers (rose allergies are more often fragrance-related than due to pollen, according to Ogren).
And if you suffer from seasonal allergies, keeping windows closed and getting someone else to mow the lawn will also help to nip your symptoms in the bud.
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Jessica Damiano writes weekly gardening columns for the AP and publishes the award-winning Weekly Dirt Newsletter. You can sign up here for weekly gardening tips and advice.
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For more AP gardening stories, go to https://apnews.com/hub/gardening.
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