Gumutindo is a phoenix risen from the ashes of an older, larger, corrupt cooperative named Bugiso. 

In 1997 Gumutindo formed using Bugiso's facilities for processing and export until 2003 when it grew to a large enough size to become independent.  Gumutindo is Just Coffee's newest coffee growing co-op partner and is a 100% Fair Trade producer.  Born in a harsh political and economic environment, Gumutindo has to fight to exist but with skilled leadership at the farmer owner, board, and management level Gumutindo has been very successful.
Gumutindo is composed of 10 primary cooperatives with 500-1000 farmer owners for each of those cooperatives.  In contrast with Oromia in Ethiopia which buys red cherries from farmers, Gumutindo purchases parchment coffee that has already been depulped and fermented.  Gumutindo does provide the machinery and facilities for farmers to process to the parchment stage, however.

Once Gumutindo buys the parchment coffee they must sort it.  While this is the traditional mechanized sorting method, it was a fine day and so the workers who were sorting (exclusively women) sorted outside the warehouse.  These workers are paid per kilo of damaged and poor quality coffee they remove and they receive a dividend based on their annual productivity at the end of the year.  They receive a wage that is about 1/3 that of a policeman or soldier in Ugandan, and employment opportunities for women in Uganda are very few, although the government is encouraging increased womens' participation in the economy.

Once parchment coffee has been processed into green coffee beans, damaged and poor quality coffee is sorted out of the purchased parchment coffee and then bagged and stored in warehouses for export.

We left the warehouse to go meet the primary cooperatives which own Gumutindo.  As we exited, Willington – Gumutindo's General Manager – pointed out that there are no signs indicating that this is the location of Gumutindo.  The political situation, he explained, is not favorable and so Gumutindo doesn't want to be high profile, or have much of a profile at all.

We met the primary cooperative's board and employees at the house of one of the farmers, Oliver.  More in-depth on her farm in the next post.  But here she and Willington are.

Their primary cooperative is structured similarly to primary co-ops in Ethiopia – the board of directors is comprised of farmers and they have a Supervisory Committee to insure controls on the primary co-op.  They then hire staff to operate the primary cooperative, all of whom are farmers and thus work part time as needed.  Like cooperatives in Oromia, they had their organizational chart posted on the wall.

There are many other coffee cooperatives on Mount Elgon where Gumutindo's farmers are located but Gumutindo is the only 100% Fair Trade cooperative.  They have a waiting list of 50 primary cooperatives wanting to join Gumutindo because of its success and they are planning to grow by 5 cooperatives over the next year.  Relative to Oromia, Gumutindo is still fairly small – but it is a new co-op and has grown through its successful partnerships with co-ops like Co-op Coffees, and other buyers in the U.S. and Europe.  Gumutindo struggled in 2005 and 2006 as they expanded and set up independent operations, but they have been profitable for the last two years and are returning dividends to their farmer owners.

Willington leads the cooperative charasmatically and with a great sense of humor, as well as an attuned sense of cooperative values. While at Oromia in Ethiopia Talahun led us around and translated for us, Willington left when we spoke to board members of primary co-ops and when we spoke to employees so they could speak freely.  Loved by all who we spoke to, he clearly understands the challenges of the cooperative: the political situation, competition from conventional cooperatives, managing growth effectively, and climate change.  A 2 percent increase in temperatures on Mount Elgon means coffee will no longer be growable in this region.

But Gumutindo shares the value of transparency with Just Coffee – here are individual farmers' accounts with Gumutindo Cooperative, posted for all to see.