Ethiopia should wake up and smell the coffee

Ethiopia should wake up and smell the coffee

Ethiopia, Africa’s biggest coffee producer, will benefit from unusually dry weather in Brazil that has lowered the output and helped lift the price of Arabica beans. Arabica prices surged to a three-year high – to over 200 US cents per pound – in October, which is expected to lift Ethiopia’s coffee export earnings by 25 per cent to $900m this year.

But Ethiopia is missing an opportunity to make a lot more money from arabica, which originated in the country’s highlands, and is considered the superior of two main varieties of coffee bean (the other, robusta, is more bitter and tends to be used to make instant coffee).

A note from Ecobank said that:

Ethiopia could position itself as a low-cost Arabica naturals producer, but it faces constraints, notably an inefficient supply chain and the low productivity of smallholder coffee farmers.

Ethiopia dominates east Africa’s coffee production (see chart). After the sector was liberalised in the 1990s its coffee output increased, surging 139 per cent between 2004 and 2013.

Source: http://blogs.ft.com/