In a significant policy shift aimed at strengthening food safety and boosting the quality of Uganda’s grain exports, the Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) has declared that no maize grain will be allowed to leave the country without a Quality (Q) mark and a Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) permit starting between July and September this year.
The announcement was made by Patricia Bageine Ejalu, the Deputy Executive Director Standards at UNBS, during a training session for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) held on Thursday at the UNBS facility in Bweyogerere.
“The idea is that when we stop that now, everyone who wants to buy grain will have to buy from a certified premise. We must stop the market for substandard product, and we must maintain control of our produce,” she said.
Ejalu noted that the move is part of broader efforts to ensure that all players in the grain sector actively engage in value addition.
“We cannot give our produce to our neighbors to process for us and sell it back at a high price, no, unacceptable. Value addition can be done in Uganda, and there are many people doing it. So we want everybody to participate,” she said
She added that the program was initially scheduled to start in February, but was delayed due to setbacks in staff capacity building.
“We were actually due to do this in February this year. The delay has been in empowering the staff to make sure we are ready. So I would probably give it between the first quarter of the next financial year, so between July to September, we shall be able to communicate and tell people when we are starting,” she said.
This bold move comes as part of a broader government plan to regulate grain exports, minimize food loss, and restore trust in Ugandan grain across regional and international markets many of which have previously flagged Ugandan maize for aflatoxin contamination.
The announcement was made during a joint UNBS and East African Grain Council (EAGC) training for 25 SMEs, which focused on safe grain handling, sampling, testing, and grading.
The training is part of an ongoing effort to equip grain sector players with the practical skills needed to comply with quality and safety standards.
“The purpose of this training is to empower a number of small and medium enterprises in the knowledge they need to ensure that the grain that they are dealing with is kept safe and meets the requirements of standards,” Ejalu explained.
Ejalu warned that much of Uganda’s grain contamination occurs after harvest, often due to poor post-harvest handling and dirty milling environments.
“Aflatoxin in grain is very much based on the practices of how you handle that grain. The crop grows very well in the garden, but after it is being harvested, or the method it’s harvested in, and the way you store it and handle it to get a final product is where the aflatoxin is growing,” she noted.
She didn’t mince words about the unhygienic conditions in which some grain is processed.
“You end up finding a lot of people who are milling maize in premises that have never been cleaned for years on end, whatever you’re doing in there, from the roof, from the floor, it is all going into your product.”
Ejalu stressed that while food safety doesn’t mean perfection, simple practices like regular cleaning and adherence to standards can prevent major contamination.
“Food is not like medicine. It’s not going into your blood system. It isn’t perfect, true, but that’s why we learn what we are doing to make sure that we minimize the chance of something going off,” she noted.
