Skip to main content

East Africa going for certified specialty coffees

By NGONDI MBURU and BONIFACE MWANGI, Special Correspondents
The East African

October 2  2011

East and Central African countries are opting for certification of coffee to satisfy market demands for higher quality.

New players such as Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi are joining the certification drive while established exporters like Uganda, Tanzania and Ethiopia are aggressively growing their certified coffees, threatening to overtake Kenya’s dominance in the region.

One of the biggest certifying bodies in the region is the Netherlands based Utz Kapeh.

Others are the Rainforest Alliance, Fair Trade Labelling Organisation and Four C’s (Common Code for the Coffee Community).

Out of the 1.355 metric tonnes of certified coffee from Africa sold through the Utz Kapeh certification scheme in the first six months of 2011, Uganda had 930mt while Kenya had 331mt, Tanzania 76mt and Ethiopia 18mt.

Certification provides products with a label that guarantees quality to the consumer and an assurance that its production met a set of environmental, social and economic standards.

Consumers in turn pay a premium above the retail price of the product, which is then channelled back to the farmer.

The global market for certified products has seen rapid growth in the recent past and forecasts project sustained growth.

From the 82,000 60kg bags of coffee sold in 2009 through Utz, the figure grew to 128,000 bags in 2010, an increase of 56 per cent.

Figures from the Rainforest Alliance indicate that sales of certified coffees grew by 41 per cent in 2009 and that since 2003, the supply of Rainforest Alliance coffees to the market grew by an average of 64 per cent annually.

This rapid growth in consumer markets propelled by increasingly quality-conscious consumers is spurring the East and Central African countries to increase their share of the certified coffee market.

In Rwanda, one of the new players in the coffee industry, the certification drive has been slowly gaining ground. “Since 2005 when we started working on certification, we now have 15 co-operatives and would like to add more certified groups,” said François Sihimbiro an agribusiness development advisor with SNV Rwanda.

According to Mr Sihimbiro, certification in Rwanda has helped keep prices stable for farmers.

With limited land, Rwanda hopes to move all its coffee into the speciality category in the near future as the only way of growing earnings from the sector.

“In 2002, only one per cent of Rwanda’s coffee was speciality, but by 2011 we had 35 per cent of our coffee in the specialty category,” said Mr Sihimbiro.
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Ethiopian Coffee & Tea Authority Relaxes Coffee Export Restrictions

  Ethiopian Coffee & Tea Authority Relaxes Coffee Export Restrictions  Addis Fortune November 14, 2020 Coffee traders can now send all grades of coffee beans to the global market, in contrast to the previous law that allowed them only to export the top four grades of coffee, according to a new directive issued by the Ethiopian Coffee & Tea Authority. Farmers and exporters can also directly ship the beans without going through the trading floors of the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX). The new scheme allows fifth grade and under grade (UG) coffee beans, which up until now have only been supplied to the local market, to be exported. Coffee quality experts at respective regional offices of the Authority will determine the grade of the coffee. The Authority at its head office issues permits to the exporters every year, while regional offices are delegated to grant export permit to farmers who have at least two hectares of farmland. The Authority sets standard prices on a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Climate-hit Ethiopia shifts coffee uphill

Caffeine high? Climate-hit Ethiopia shifts coffee uphill Elias Gebreselassie Thomson Reuters Foundation June 3, 2018 HAMBELA, Ethiopia (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Few countries take coffee as seriously as Ethiopia - and that’s not only because it prides itself as being the source of the prized Arabica bean. But rising temperatures and worsening drought linked to climate change are now hitting production - and fixing that may require moving many Ethiopian coffee fields uphill, experts say. Aside from its cultural value, coffee is Ethiopia’s single largest source of export revenue, worth more than $860 million in the 2016-2017 production year. But coffee-growing areas in eastern Ethiopia have seen the average temperature climb 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past three decades, according to the Environment, Climate Change and Coffee Forest Forum (ECCCFF), an Ethiopian non-governmental organization. That has caused stronger drought ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The saga of the Starbucks-Ethiopia affair

Note :   The most recent developments on Starbucks vs. Ethiopia are listed below: January 9, 2012:  Has trademarking doubled Ethiopian farmers' income?   January 5, 2012:   Starbucks to showcase use of a QR code to trace Organic Ethiopia Sidamo® Coffee   ========= "When two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. When the same two elephants make love, the grass still suffers." - derivative of an old African saying Life, before and after the agreement, remains unaffected for farmer Gemede Robe, the icon of the Starbucks vs. Ethiopia dispute. He lives in the Borena zone of the Oromia region, one of the many coffee growing zones of the country. (Photo: Courtesy of Oxfam America) By Wondwossen Mezlekia May 31, 2010 The coffee trademark dispute between Starbucks and Ethiopia officially ended exactly three years ago. In June 2007, the giant coffee chain and the government of Ethiopia declared their agreement "to work together to license...
Read more