On a red-soiled coffee plantation some 170 miles northeast of Uganda’s capital city of Kampala, a young woman sorts coffee beans headed for a Trader Joe’s in Milwaukee.
Endiro Coffee, a collective coffee firm made up of 518 Ugandan women in the mountainous Mbale region of eastern Uganda, just struck a deal with the U.S.-based grocery retailer to deliver whole coffee beans to its Midwestern stores through Chicago. The company, which was founded in 2011, is one of thousands of groups among 93 coffee growing districts in Uganda that are rapidly growing their bean production to claim their place in the global coffee market.
