Impact Lines is a Kampala-based consulting firm specialised in sustainable coffee and cocoa supply chains. We combine local and international consultants with our own team of enumerators who live and work in rural Uganda.
Independent assessments of voluntary standards that support sustainability reporting and assurance.
Technical advice on traceability systems and EUDR and CS3D compliance.
Strategic guidance and facilitation of pre-competitive collaboration between companies.
Our team has run coffee sourcing operations, so our advice fits how exporters, buying stations and roasters actually work. As an independent party, we are trusted by competing companies to coordinate shared risk monitoring, and by standards bodies to verify their programs. We turn household survey data into dashboards and living income scenarios that clients can explore themselves. We test agronomic advice on our own research estate before recommending it, and we help companies put EUDR and CS3D into practice. Our enumerators reside in the same regions where coffee households live, so field evidence is collected in local languages by people farmers know.
7 industry clients (names available upon request)
Reports, tools and training material from our programs, kept online so the sector can keep using them. Videos open on YouTube.
Four practices, each with a picture poster, a 2-hour training module and, for three of them, a short demonstration video, for extension agents, lead farmers and SME agronomists. The posters compare a farmer who gains income with one who misses it. Developed for Buganda (Robusta) and Western Uganda (Arabica).
Covering the soil with crop residues to keep moisture in, add nutrients and cut weeding. Poster edition made with Ndugu.
Contour trenches that stop erosion and hold rainwater on sloping coffee land. Poster edition made with Ndugu.
Choosing and applying manure, compost and fertiliser around coffee trees. Poster edition made with Gorilla Highlands Coffee.
Shade trees and coffee–banana intercropping, with the shade species MAAIF recommends for Robusta and Arabica. Poster edition made with Rubanga Cooperative Society.
Producer and cupping profiles of the seven Ugandan coffee exporters supported by the CBI Climate-Smart Coffee program, prepared for World of Coffee 2026 in Brussels: Banyankole Coffee Services, Fine & Specialty, Gorilla Highlands Coffee, Mwanyi Terimba, Ndugu Farmers, Nyamirima Mutegaya Cooperative and Rubanga Cooperative. Covers volumes, regions, sourcing approach, certifications and contacts, with two cupping profiles per exporter.
Social and behaviour change (SBC) research behind the Climate-Smart Coffee (CSC) farmer training kit.
How the program applied a social and behaviour change (SBC) approach to farmer training. Covers the co-creation in Kayunga, workshops in Rukungiri and Masaka with barriers, enablers, missed-income messages by gender and the best channels to reach farmers, and how the results shaped the posters, videos and training modules.
Analysis of why smallholder farmers in Kayunga District do or do not invest in climate-smart coffee: financial barriers, social norms, household and gender dynamics, information gaps and trust. Ends with behavioural insights and a messaging framework.
Pre-competitive work with coffee exporters to identify, monitor and remediate human rights and environmental risks.
UCLAP is a pre-competitive collaboration among multinational traders to collectively monitor corporate risks and remediate their impact in Greater Masaka, in preparation for the CS3D regulation. Presentation to the Uganda Coffee Platform.
Preparing coffee supply chains for the EU Deforestation Regulation.
Webinar for Ugandan coffee exporters on what European importers expect under the EU Deforestation Regulation, and how SMEs can prepare.
Publications by partner organisations that our team contributed to.
Common definitions and data collection methods for measuring farmer household income and cost of production, so results can be compared across companies, projects and supply chains. Developed with the DIASCA working group on cost of production and actual income. Koen Sneyers is acknowledged as a contributor.
A work sample showing how we turn farm survey data into decisions. Built on anonymised data from a Ugandan Arabica sourcing program.
Household survey data (anonymised) showing coffee farm profitability and income diversity. Adjust price factors to simulate scenarios and their effect on the living income gap of the farmer population in your supply chain.
17 of max. 20 resources · PDFs under 100 MB · videos hosted on YouTube
A core team in Kampala, working with associate consultants and our enumerator network.
Known to colleagues as Kemmy. A communications and project management professional with an MPH, working across health, agriculture and the arts. She led knowledge management at WI-HER across ten country offices, and collaboration and learning on USAID Uganda's Social and Behavior Change Activity. At Impact Lines she supports the CBI Climate-Smart Coffee program.
Eli is a coffee agronomist based in Fort Portal. As Lead Agronomist at Great Lakes Coffee he set up demonstration plots, trained lead farmers and supervised 17 field agronomists. For the CBI Climate-Smart Coffee program he leads extension agent training, follow-up coaching and demonstration sessions with SMEs.
A social and policy researcher with more than 15 years in community development, gender and human rights, and founder of Mbeleni Foundation. She holds a Master of Human Rights from Makerere University. For UCLAP she worked on the qualitative validation of human rights risks with coffee farmers and workers in Greater Masaka.
More than 15 years in agriculture and rural development, value chain analysis, MEAL and knowledge management in Africa, Europe and the Middle East, including roles at Swisscontact and CTA in Wageningen. She holds an MA in Human Resources and Knowledge Management from Lancaster University. For UCLAP she supports consortium meetings, research with rightsholders and follow-up of remediation projects.
Harriet is the Finance and Administration Officer at Impact Lines. She manages the firm's financial and administrative operations, keeping its work organised, accountable and running smoothly. She holds a bachelor's degree in Ethics and Development Studies, which shapes her careful, people-centred approach, and is pursuing a certificate in business analytics to use data for sound financial and operational decisions.
“I believe in data-driven approaches and smart analytics to create market-led impact in tropical commodity chains.”
Koen holds a master’s in Forest and Nature Engineering and further training in tropical agriculture (KU Leuven). He has worked in East Africa for more than 15 years.
From 2016 to 2021 he was the Agribusiness Manager at Great Lakes Coffee in Uganda, where he built direct sourcing chains with more than 500 suppliers and led a team of 38 agronomists and 15 internal auditors, reaching 19,000 coffee producers. He also contributed to the development of MaxTrace, the first coffee traceability software platform in Africa, and an in-house sustainability standard recognised by the Global Coffee Platform (GCP).
In 2021 he founded Impact Lines to fill the need for dedicated coffee consulting services in East Africa. Since then he has led impact assessments of the Nescafé Plan for Rainforest Alliance in Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda, and advised major international donors, traders and standard organisations on traceability, human rights due diligence and household impact analysis. He is also technical lead of Kawa Tamu Estates, a regenerative agriculture research estate.
Our team of data collectors resides within the same coffee communities and understands both the commercial and sustainability challenges. This lets them interview households on sensitive topics with nuance specific to each culture and tribe.
Work for development programs, standards bodies and coffee and cocoa companies.
Implementing the program on behalf of CBI, helping SME exporters prepare for EUDR compliance, invest in sustainable production and present themselves to European buyers.
Independent coordination of a pre-competitive collaboration preparing coffee exporters for CS3D due diligence requirements.
Verification of sustainability schemes including JDE Common Ground, Nespresso AAA and Nescafé Plan.
Technical lead and investment in setting up Uganda's first regenerative agriculture (RegAg) research estate. Practical agronomy trials on agroforestry, nutrient recycling and organic approaches test and validate the advice given to the coffee sector.
Details available upon specific request.
For assignments, partnerships or questions about our resources.
Need field evidence, traceability or due diligence support in coffee and cocoa?