UGANDA RE-ROUTES COFFEE EXPORTS THROUGH KISUMU Long delays at the railway crossing on the Kenyan border have led Uganda to re-route its coffee exports through a ferry link with the Kenyan port of Kisumu across Lake Victoria, Ugandan officials based in Kenya said. Uganda has a direct rail link with the Kenyan port of Mombasa through which it conducts 70 pct of its external trade but there is a chronic shortage of railway wagons, they said. Customs at Kisumu take less than a day compared with two to three at the Malaba rail border crossing, a Ugandan Railways official said. "Malaba is now handling only 10 pct of the trade and all the coffee and oil goes through Kisumu," he said. However, an accident recently damaged the wagon ferry which plies between Kisumu and the Ugandan port of Jinja, causing bottlenecks on the lake route too. Sources at the Coffee Marketing Board in Kampala reported delays in coffee export shipments last January due to congestion on the lake ferries. Coffee accounts for about 95 pct of Uganda's export earnings and last November President Yoweri Museveni ordered all coffee shipments to be carried by rail in order to avoid the higher costs of road haulage.