Tea is Uganda’s quiet agricultural success story—less celebrated internationally than the country’s coffee but commercially significant, culturally embedded, and for gorilla trekkers, an immediate sensory encounter with the landscape they are travelling through. The tea estates that carpet hillsides between Fort Portal and the Rwenzori foothills, and the smaller tea gardens in the highlands near Kabale and Bwindi, produce a beverage that has been part of Ugandan daily life since colonial planting programmes in the early twentieth century.
The history of tea in Uganda
Commercial tea cultivation in Uganda began under British colonial administration in the 1920s, with large estates established in the foothills of the Rwenzori Mountains and around Fort Portal in the Toro Kingdom. The crop suited the altitude, rainfall, and cool temperatures of western Uganda’s highlands—a climate profile similar to the established tea regions of India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) that the British colonial agricultural service used as its reference model. By independence in 1962, Uganda had a functioning tea export industry, though far smaller than Kenya’s.
The Amin period (1971-1979) devastated Uganda’s tea sector along with most of the economy: estates were nationalised, skilled workers expelled (many were members of the Asian community that Amin expelled in 1972), infrastructure fell into disrepair, and export markets were lost. The rehabilitation of the tea industry from the 1990s onward—under more stable governance and with international development support—has been substantial but gradual. Uganda now produces approximately 60,000 to 70,000 tonnes of made tea per year, primarily as CTC (cut, tear, curl) black tea for export, with a smaller and growing specialty and orthodox tea sector.
Tea near Bwindi and what you will taste
The highlands around Kabale—the regional centre for south-western Uganda—support tea cultivation at altitudes that produce a particularly flavourful leaf. Cool nights, misty mornings, and well-drained volcanic soils create growing conditions that tea aficionados compare favourably with high-grown teas from Kenya and Rwanda. Several small-estate and cooperative tea producers in the Kigezi highlands are developing specialty and orthodox teas for the premium market, and a morning cup at a Bwindi lodge sourcing from local producers offers a distinctly different experience from mass-market exported tea bags.
Ugandan tea is typically drunk with milk and sugar in the British colonial style—the “chai” preparation common across East Africa—served in an enamel mug or glass at roadside stalls, or in more refined form at lodge breakfasts. The tea grown within view of the Bwindi canopy, steeped and served on a deck overlooking the same forest, represents a small but genuine pleasure that connects the visitor’s experience to the agricultural landscape surrounding the park.
Tea estate visits on the Bwindi route
The overland route from Kampala to Bwindi via Fort Portal passes through or near several large tea estates, with the most photogenic stretches between Mbarara and Fort Portal where the road runs through continuous green tea rows on gently terraced hillsides. Stopping at a roadside estate for a brief walk through the tea bushes—many welcome visitors informally—provides a ground-level encounter with the agricultural landscape that drone footage and guidebook photographs do not convey. The smell of fresh-picked tea leaves, the sound of pickers moving through the rows, and the scale of the planted hillsides create a sensory memory that the lodge breakfast cup of tea will subsequently trigger every morning of the trip.
