I WAS in the United States a short while ago and found myself sympathising with some puny avocados imported from Mexico when they were confronted by a couple of others from Uganda.

The disparity in their sizes would have been ironic if they were stood in front of their respective price tags – the Mexicans commanding US$2.69 each compared to the Ugandans at US$0.50 (equivalent).

My friend there handled her avocados understandably delicately.

Minutes after I had seen them compared to the Mexican variety from some US supermarket, the Ugandan avocados disappeared into a corner of her fridge.

Visiting the home often during my stay there I noticed the Mexican avocados were always on offer right there on the countertop, placed in a spot I was sure to notice, next to the coffee machine and drinks corner.

The Ugandans were in hiding; she was not going to allow for any ‘accident’ involving the unauthorised cutting open of her special avocados.

And when they were officially opened up after ten days in that fridge they looked and tasted as fresh as they would have ripe off a kiosk stand in Kampala.

As for her matooke, woe betide any person with the gall to reach into the freezer to touch the package of peeled banana fingers from home. 

We may be special, Ugandans, but our food even more so.

One day during the trip a couple of us visited two different supermarkets dedicated to African and Asian food respectively.

In the Asian supermarket we bumped into a Ugandan couple who our friend had not seen in about a decade. After catch-up chit-chat they stated their purpose of the day – they had driven across counties to buy ‘regular’ food supplies.

Matooke, for instance, and they pointed at a strange-looking item labelled “Hawaiian Plantain” as they said so. Under intense interrogation, they explained that this plantain contained a tough seed deep inside but its flesh tasted just like matooke. 

That plantain cost US$3.73 per kilo – UGX14,000 per kilo! The ‘Hawaiian Plantains’ are short and fat, so only about four of them make up a kilo.

At UGX14,000?! Yes – and the Ugandan Americans emphasized I would not believe how much those plantains tasted like proper matooke. That’s why they drove long distances to shop in that supermarket.

We may be special, Ugandans, but our food even more so to the point that we apparently sacrifice so much for imitations.

The problem being that, in our ‘special-ness’ we are not serious enough about the opportunities staring us in the face.

Walking through those supermarkets we were dismayed to find zero Ugandan products.

Nothing. 

In the Asian supermarket we even got to a shelf selling ‘sombe‘. Sombe is a normal meal for many western Ugandans, Eastern Congolese and Banyarwanda – made of cassava leaves cooked in our wise traditional fashion.

The one in the US supermarkets?

From West Africa.

Over drinks and dinner at different friend’s homes there later in the week we had to discuss some of this afresh because we discovered that too many Ugandans in America had no clue how much we really produce in Uganda and place on our supermarket shelves.

I am the guy who, in Kampala and our other cities, turns waiters away when they present us with Tabasco ‘hot’ (mbu) sauce bottles and then I call for Ugandan kamulali bottles or, lazima, fresh chillis.

In the US I got tired of: “Oh, but we have akabanga!”

I accepted it because we are in the East African Community and prosperity in one part of this territory should be prosperity in another but…people there have no idea how many of their relatives back here actually grow, process and package the stuff.

The same went for coffee – to the point where someone confessed that she was buying a special blend of ground coffee at UGX75,000 for a 500g bag!

Now, that may seem normal because of logistics and the markup involved but therein lies the opportunity.

There are people out there ready, willing and able to spend such amounts on coffee you and I can get at less than a third of the price.

Kenya isn’t waiting much – which is good for East Africa as a whole. As I was returning to the region a news story popped up on my feed about avocados.

A Kenyan startup called SokoFresh that focuses on solar-powered cold storage to keep produce fresh for export is digging into the booming avocado trade and investing more there.

Kenya reportedly produces more than 500,000 tonnes of avocados annually, and is in the top five (5) on the global avocado production list, though 80% of production is by small farmers and people like myself. 

Cold storage will change the game for them in a big way – like the two Ugandan avocados in my friend’s fridge from the other week. 

Two years from now, don’t be surprised to hear that the avocado wars in the US are between Mexicans and Kenyans, because they have decided to Be Serious about this. 

And from sending the fruit fresh off the tree there are just a few steps to getting value-added products onto supermarket shelves there (and here).

The rest of us?

We seem to sometimes look away when opportunity stares us in the face.

Stop doing so.