At the peak of production in 2013, tobacco leaf was one of Uganda’s biggest foreign exchange earners, raking in $120 million in exports revenue and employing over 75,000 farmers who were producing about 18,000 tonnes per year.
Started in the 1920s by British American Tobacco (BAT), tobacco farming and the entire industry was so vibrant that in 2012, British American Tobacco Uganda (Batu) — the biggest exporter of Ugandan leaf at the time — invested about $1 million in its central purchasing point in Hoima, Bunyoro sub-region, an area that had 15,000 of Batu’s 30,000 contracted farmers.
