Empaako Co.

In September 2025, Semilla Coffee started buying cherries from several communities located in the Rwenzori mountain range of the Kabarole district around the city of Fort Portal in Western Uganda. Together with a handful of dedicated coffee producers with little experience in agronomy but no active participation in processing their own raw material, Semilla helped set up a micro washing station with the goal to shift the proportions of the local coffee supply chain closer to a farmer-led processing structure, enabling the producers to collect, deliver and process their coffee cherries themselves with full traceability and transparency on their own harvest data.

Empaako (rutooro for "pet name") Collective, a company Semilla founded together with Kabuuka Elimethidas and his wife Immaculate Karungi, is now actively supporting more than 100 growers and aims to continue with more for the upcoming years. With 10 permanent members of the team, the goal is to ensure steady and strong support and feedback for smallholder growers who are the everyday workers in their coffee gardens and struggle daily with pests and diseases, lack of fertilisers and tools while suffering under highly volatile prices.

Morning Glory is now committed to supporting Empaako directly. This project is a great point of pride for Dom, our roaster, and MG as a whole, as it was Dom who connected Eli with Semilla.

Dom and Eli worked together in 2020 and 2021 on cherry sourcing and processing for another green coffee company who were expanding into the region. The Rwenzoris are now alive with the hum of coffee washing stations. This can be a great benefit to the communities there, if done right. We at MG believe in Eli, Immaculate and Semilla.