ADDIS ABABA– Brand Logos are expected to promote Ethiopian coffee during the Second International Coffee Conference due to be held at the Millennium Hall, said the Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority.
For the second time this year, the International Coffee Conference, Exhibition and Festival will be celebrated as a culmination of similar events. Celebrating this coffee day in Ethiopia creates a great global opportunity to showcase our coffee brands that stand shoulder high to others elsewhere in the world, said Sahlemariam Gebremedhin, Public Relations and Communication Director of the Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority.
The event will host about 200 coffee buyers and scholars from around the globe. In this event more than 400 local attendees, 56 companies displaying their products and estimated participants will take part from various locations, he added.
These festivals will be held from Feb 9-11. Fifteen selected papers will be presented by various local and foreign scholars to help the field that has great role for the sector’s growth. According to him, constructive discussions, exhibitions, festivals, barista competitions will be held. Festival of harvest and state-based programs will be part of the event.
Participants’ online registration is currently underway on the website dedicated to the same purpose. So far a handful of participants have expressed their willingness to attend the event at the millennium hall.
Various stakeholders are working in partnership with the Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority: those are Ethiopian Coffee Exporters Association, Ethiopian Coffee Development Association, Ethiopian Coffee Roasters Association, Women in Coffee, ECX, Cooperative Agency, Ethiopian Airlines, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Trade and Industry among others.
In the event Ethiopia will create an opportunity to directly connect manufacturers, exporters and buyers. It as well helps promote marketability in the eyes of our customers and help them gain market credibility by staying in direct production areas. It paves way to the benefits of fair coffee business.
It allows them to cross fertilize their experiences with different coffee producing countries and share their knowledge of the trade, creates the opportunity to retain existing markets and expand opportunities for breaking into new markets.
It creates the opportunity to introduce Ethiopian coffee ceremony, which is a socializing event, to the world. The trend will contribute to the tourism industry, as the guests will be exploring the physical and cultural attractions of Ethiopia.
Generally, the second coffee conference, exhibition, and festival help to create a global partnership and association around the green emerald. It is expected to be a forum for strengthening business relations between the business communities and governments.
Not only that the brand logo will be used to advertise Ethiopian coffee on international forums. Ethiopia is definitely one of the world’s leading coffee producers and one of Africa’s leading coffee producers, but it has not yet reaped the benefits it deserves.
The country’s failure to advertise its coffee to the extent it should and the lack of a brand that represents all of our coffee has been ascribed as crippling factors.
Therefore, this brand is designed to help ward off such setbacks. In light of this, parading branding logos at such an international event promises handsome returns in introducing the country’s wide spectrum of coffee having peculiar flavors, he concluded.
The Ethiopian Herald Sunday Edition, February 2/2020
BY MUSSA MUHAMMED
