By Hadra Ahmed Addis Fortune Published on January 29, 2012 January 30, 2012 Ethiopia’s flagship export item, coffee, has fallen into a troubling state of affairs after the nation’s exporters have failed to pack out even one fourth of the quantity expected to be sold in this fiscal year. Only a little over 20pc of the 270,000tn of coffee that federal authorities had planned for export in the current fiscal year has been shipped out, despite two quarters’ time already having passed, industry sources disclosed to Fortune. Alarmed by such a drastic shortfall compared to the export target, Kebede Chane, minister of Trade (MoT), and Yacob Yala, state minister, called an urgent meeting with leaders of the Ethiopian Coffee Exporters Association on Thursday afternoon, January 26, 2012, held inside the Ministry’s meeting hall on Tito street, also attended by Elleni G. Madhin (PhD), chief executive officer of the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX). “The meeting aimed to...