BY DANIEL ALEMAYEHU
People from Africa, especially from Ethiopia have many things to say about their assets. Out of these, one of the unique things that Ethiopia is famous for is being the origin of coffee beans. Ethiopians can ask the rest of the world whether they know or not that coffee is originally discovered by a goatherd named Kaldi, an Ethiopian who lived around 850 AD.
Its origination and easily acceptance all over the world make coffee the back bone for Ethiopia’s economy and strengthen social bondage of the community. To this end, there is a typical coffee ceremony in most parts of Ethiopia that people gather for having coffee. During this gathering, people share what they have in mind and discuss on different social, political, and economic issues of the country. It is a kind of ‘Live News Sharing’ among the people. This coffee ceremony has plenty of advantages for the people in which one is to share and discuss on many things; it is also manifestation of Ethiopians’ culture to eat and drink together.
Coffee is the 2nd most traded commodity in the world market after petroleum. In the international trade, 39 percent of coffee export is done by Brazil. Ethiopia contributed about 5 percent of the international coffee exchange in 2011, according to International Journal of Economic Plants, 2015.
For Ethiopia, coffee is one of the best tradable commodities that can pull foreign currency for the nation. In Ethiopia, there are four types of coffee production system: forest coffee, semi-forest coffee, garden coffee, and plantation coffee. Nowadays, Ethiopia has best brands internationally including, Volcanica, which is the best overall, Cooper’s Cask Single Origin, Fresh Roasted Coffee LLC, Marley Coffee One Love, and the likes. Germany, USA, and Belgium are the main destinations of Ethiopian coffee.
According to the information sent to The Ethiopian herald recently from The Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority, the Ethiopian government earned around 115 million USD from coffee export last month only. According to the report, the export is greater than the record of similar period last year with additional value of 146 percent in terms of amount and 161 percent in revenue generating.
However, in many occasions, several complaints have been raised related to the benefits of coffee farmers and options have been taken by the farmers. According to Sahlemariam Gebremedhin, Public Relations Director of the Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority, reports of the past few years pointed out that some farmers in some places have stopped planting and producing coffee. Instead, they engaged in planting Chat or Eucalyptus trees locally known as Bahir Zaf. The reason for this is that the farmers worked hard to get some benefits from their coffee production, but there was a big difference between the income the farmers gained and the work they had done. Their income was very little so that they couldn’t feed their families or send their children to school. As a result, they preferred to change their field of production from coffee to other more profitable products. In the past, the farmers used to sell a kilo of coffee with only 15 Birr.
Nowadays, however, things are changed for good for the farmers and the coffee production as well. This time farmers produce coffee not only in greater quantity, but also in better quality. In the reward, plenty of farmers have become benefited from coffee, Sahlemariam said.
The turning point for the coffee production that motivated the farmers to be good at production was the introduction of the competition ‘Cup of Excellence’ which was started last year. This year’s competition was held successfully. This competition has a lot of impacts on the overall coffee production, the PR Director said.
This competition is one of the well-known competitions around the world. It also acquaints the world of coffee with several reimbursements. Above all, the competition mainly benefits the coffee farmers. Earlier to that, however, the farmers were on the verge of quitting coffee farming, Sahlemariam added.
Last year, the Director highlighted that when the news got viral as the winners of the competition got millions of Birr as a prize, most farmers got the interest to be part of it. The best coffee that stood first on the last year’s competition was sold by 407 Dollar per kilo. This means the price of a kilo of coffee became around 15 thousand Birr. Hence, the farmer earned over 5 million Birr for 9 bags of coffee locally known as Kesha. On this year’s competition, the best coffee was sold by 330 Dollar per kilo which means 19 keshas of coffee was sold by 364,643 Dollar. This benefit sends a very loud message to the rest of the farmers to produce best quality coffee in greater quantity. It also conveys a message that how specialty coffee matters most. Besides, before the competition, the authority organized awareness creation programs on quality coffee production.
As to the Director, at this time, every farmer knows about the competition. He said: “We can just observe the change in figures. When we compare last year’s and this year’s participation, last year, 1459 coffee samples were presented; but this year, the number is accelerated to 1848 coffee samples. In 2020, there were 3 coffee samples which got 90 and more points and provided ‘Presidential Award’ for their excellence. Again, this year, there were 5 coffee samples got the award.”
He also said that the number of companies that want to buy the winner coffee samples is raised. The figure shows the progress that in 2020, there were 140 buyers from 26 different countries. This year, however, both the number of buyers and countries has shown increment to 171 and 33 respectively in the auction. This will pave the way for better production of specialty coffee samples.
Furthermore, Sahlemariam said that the farmers have better and diversified choices of trade. Formerly, the only way to trade coffee was through the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX), but this time farmers who have more than 2 hectares of land for coffee production can directly export their coffee to the foreign world. Besides, these are not the only means to export coffee; farmers can also work cooperatively with other stakeholders to export their product.
These mechanisms showed better foreign currency generating method. This year, the country got a record of 907 million Dollar from coffee export. This implies that the farmers have started to produce coffee in better quantity and quality, the Director added.
Regarding the generation of foreign currency, Tatek Yilma, Market Development and Promotion Director at Coffee and tea Authority, for his part said that the government has permitted the opportunity for coffee companies to sell their products at selected tourist sites, star hotels, and at airports after they meet the qualifications. This helps the government to get more foreign currency here in the country.
Tatek further said that banks and the Custom Authority regulate and control the flow of the foreign currency and check whether these companies are selling the real product.
In the future, the authority plans to work in collaboration with different stakeholders for quality production. Some investors have used better technologies for coffee development, so that the authority wants to expand these experiences to the next level. “In addition, we have been trying to fix problems related with the trade exchanges, and assist the whole system with technology,” he stressed.
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD AUGUST 26/ 2021
