Slow News Italy × Simma Africa · Field Dispatch, Uganda
Coffee Conversations:
From the Ground Up
Documenting the daily lives, challenges, and unheard voices of smallholder coffee growers in Mubende District, Uganda.
Documenting the daily lives, challenges, and unheard voices of smallholder coffee growers in Mubende District, Uganda.
In January 2026, Slow News Italy Co-Founder Andrea Spinelli Barrile travelled to Mubende District, Uganda, alongside Natasha Simma, Executive Director of Simma Africa Creative Arts Foundation and African Correspondent for Slow News Italy. Together they spent days embedded with smallholder coffee farming communities, conducting interviews, documenting processing operations, and following the value chain from cherry to export grade.
Uganda is one of Africa's leading coffee producers, yet the farmers at the origin of this globally traded commodity rarely see more than a fraction of its retail value. This field mission set out to document why, and to let the farmers speak for themselves.
"They grow the coffee the world drinks. They rarely decide what it is worth."Natasha Simma, Slow News Editorial Fellow and African Correspondent
Natasha's decade of community-embedded work through Simma Africa gave the team access that conventional foreign correspondents rarely secure. Farmers spoke freely. Cooperative leaders shared data. Processing station managers walked them through operations they would not ordinarily open to outside journalists.
Farmers in Mubende describe shifting rainfall patterns that have disrupted the harvest calendar for three consecutive years. Their knowledge is generational; the climate is not cooperating. This thread follows what it means to farm on memory when the weather no longer matches the lessons passed down.
Ugandan coffee travels through four to six intermediaries before reaching European shelves. At each step, value is extracted. At the farm gate, what remains is rarely enough to cover the cost of the next season. This thread maps the journey and the economics of each handoff.
Women perform an estimated 70% of coffee farm labour in Uganda. Land titles and cooperative membership records tell a different story. This thread follows what is owed, and to whom, and what changes when women hold the title to the land they already work.
On the road, Mubende District Natasha Simma and Andrea Spinelli Barrile travel between farming communities. Long-form field journalism requires time on the road, trust built over days, and a willingness to follow the story where it leads, not where it is convenient to go.
The Mubende field mission began with a question Slow News Italy had been circling for months: why does one of the world's most celebrated coffee origins remain one of the least-told stories in European media? The answer, as Natasha and Andrea discovered across days of interviews and travel, is partly logistical and partly structural.
Reaching smallholder farmers requires local networks, language fluency, and a willingness to report without the cushion of a press trip itinerary. You cannot parachute in and expect communities to speak. You have to have been there before, in other forms, doing other work, for years.
Natasha's decade of community-embedded work through Simma Africa Creative Arts Foundation made this journalism possible. SAF's programmes in the creative economy, gender advocacy, and environmental rights have built trust in communities where outside journalists rarely reach. That trust opened doors the formal press credential alone would not have opened.
What emerged from this field mission is a body of material that will form the backbone of Slow News Italy's Africa correspondent series, produced over Natasha's 90-day Editorial Fellowship in Rome, beginning June 2026.
The Mubende field mission was not a prelude to the Slow News Editorial Fellowship, it was the proof of concept. In January 2026, Natasha and Andrea produced original field journalism together. The fellowship formalises what the field already demonstrated: that this collaboration produces reporting that neither partner could achieve alone.
Natasha will be based at the Slow News Italy editorial offices in Rome for 90 days from 30 June to 29 September 2026, working on long-form journalism production, story development, field research for the Africa correspondent series, and editorial meetings with Africa Rivista magazine and il manifesto newspaper.
Mubende District, January 2026, the working relationship that preceded the formal fellowship appointment.
Natasha Simma is the Founder and Executive Director of Simma Africa Creative Arts Foundation (SAF), based in Kampala, Uganda, with 8,920+ community members and a team of 12 creative professionals. She has 10+ years of experience using arts and journalism for social-economic transformation, climate justice, and policy advocacy. SAF holds active grants from the EU, OACPS, British Council, UHAI-EASHRI, and the French Embassy Uganda. Natasha is also Founder of the Ntare Festival of the Arts and Rewild Uganda, and Editorial Fellow at Slow News Italy.
Slow News (StP Srl) is an independent Italian media organisation registered at the Tribunal of Milan (n.43, 8 February 2016), committed to in-depth, long-form journalism on underreported stories across the global south, food systems, culture, and climate. Based at Via Lambrate 5, 20131 Milano. Andrea Spinelli Barrile travelled to Uganda in January 2026 to conduct the Mubende field mission with Natasha Simma, producing the photojournalism and field reporting that led directly to Natasha's formal appointment as Editorial Fellow.
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