A loan helped enable higher incomes, improved yields, and increased market access for smallholder coffee farmers in Uganda.


Mountain Harvest's story

Despite coffee’s importance to the Ugandan economy, coffee farmers are paid poorly and are often vulnerable to a cycle of poverty. Coffee growers do not have the necessary infrastructure, training, or financing to produce high quality coffee. Therefore, farmers are left to distribute their yields to traders at low prices who primarily produce coffee for commodity markets, generating lower incomes for farmers.

Mountain Harvest, a social enterprise based in the Mount Elgon region of Uganda, works to raise the quality of life for smallholder Arabica coffee farmers. Its approach elevates the quality of coffee, disconnects pricing from the commodity markets, and uses the additional margin generated from higher prices to invest at the farm level through an intense, service-oriented engagement with smallholder farmers. Mount Elgon is an untapped origin for the popular Arabica beans, placing Uganda in a position to break into international specialty coffee markets.

Mountain Harvest supports more than 800 farmers, paying 20% above local market prices. The company builds farm and household assets and enhances farmer resilience to shocks on a commercially and environmentally sustainable basis.

This loan of $200,000 will be used to purchase more coffee from smallholders farmers in Uganda. This is Mountain Harvest’s second loan through the Kiva Social Enterprise program. View their previous loan here.


This loan is special because:

It provides ethical prices to over 800 Ugandan coffee farmers.



Loan details


Lenders and lending teams




Loan details