As Ethiopia’s export trade mainly relays on coffee, the need to develop the coffee sector has become a matter of existence. Ethiopia has not yet effectively utilized its potential though it is endowed with various coffee specialties with unique features. The country is the home of organic forest coffee which is uncommon in the other parts of the planet. However the country has not been benefited from such blessings under global and domestic circumstances.
Gizat Worku, Ethiopian Coffee Exporters Association General Manager told The Ethiopian Herald to penetrate into the global market, the Cup of Excellence (CoE) will be held in Ethiopia for the first time in March 2020. The event is made possible through an ongoing partnership between the Alliance for Coffee Excellence, the Ethiopia Coffee and Tea Authority, United States Agency for International Development, and Feed the Future Ethiopia Value Chain.
The government is extensively working to alert producers as to how to be competent in the renowned green coffee competition and auction program Cup of Excellence, which is for the first time coming to coffee’s birthplace, Gizat said.
According to documents, the CoE program, which involves rigorous multi-round judging of coffees before final scoring and an auction program has raised more than $60 million in revenue for individual farmers, mostly smallholders, over the past 19 years.
Thus, if Ethiopian farmers are assisted with the adequate agro-extension package, drastic changes could be registered in enabling coffee specialty of Ethiopia the most preferable in the globe. To achieve this, universities, people with expertize knowledge, and the government are urged to work together with coffee-producing localities. Most of all Higher Institutes are needed to work closely with identified coffee specialties such as Nekemte, Jimma, Limu, Sidama, Yirga Chefe and Harar,
While CoE organizer, the Alliance for Coffee Excellence (ACE), has found past success introducing the CoE program to Rwanda and Burundi, as well as at least nine Latin American countries, it has not to this point taken place in Ethiopia, a renowned coffee origin that promises to provide the competition with a wealth of high-quality coffees.
“Nearly two decades after our founding, it has long been the dream to bring the Cup of Excellence to the birthplace of coffee,” ACE Executive Director Darrin Daniel said in a recent joint announcement. “Ethiopia represents the quintessential specialty coffee origin and with our program operating in Ethiopia, we hope to further discover and reward smallholder farmers who are in need of market access via our competition and auction.”
2019 is proving to be a landmark year for ACE and the CoE program, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary. In addition to the Ethiopia announcement, the group has made some significant tweaks to the CoE rules and regulations designed to expand the auction benefits, and it has announced plans to launch in another renowned origin, Indonesia.
The Ethiopia CoE is made possible through collaboration between ACE, the Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority and USAID’s Feed the Future Ethiopia Value Chain Activity. Designed to build more robust and sustainable agricultural systems to benefit Ethiopian smallholder farmers, the USAID program is in year two of its five-year schedule.
“Buy-in across the country from trading houses, cooperatives, and coffee unions have been swift and positive,” said Feed The Future Ethiopia Value Chain Activity (FTFE-VCA) Project Director Ian Chesterman. “Prioritizing open collaboration between the private and public sectors from the start will help ensure the competition benefits all stakeholders, particularly our smallholder clients.”
According to studies, challenging factors associated with coffee in Ethiopia are policy, technique, and marketing system. The policy is a matter to be dealt with and altered by the government, while the marketing system needs further study. On the other hand, factors related to technical issue is the principal part which touches a wide range of coffee actors starting from producers to exporters to government.
Thus, the Cup of Excellence to be held in the coming year is a technical issue the Ministry of Agriculture, The Ethiopian Tea Coffee Authority are dealing in and working together with the Ethiopian Coffee Exporters Association.
The Ethiopian Herald August 8, 2019
BY LAKACHEW ATINAFU
