POOR FARMER | COFFEE POLITICS A Record Is Not Enough Ethiopia's coffee windfall, and what reached the farm gate By Wondwossen Mezlekia A postscript to the series, six weeks after Part 5. Part 6: The Coffee Year Closed. The Account Did Not. Published Friday, August 21, 2026 When Part 5 ran on July 7, Ethiopia's fiscal year had closed and the Prime Minister had told Parliament that coffee exports earned 3.1 billion dollars. One question was deliberately left open: what would the written close-of-year account show? The Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority had already offered an explanation for the record. Better grades, more specialty coffee, direct sales, new markets and tighter control of diversion had allowed Ethiopia to earn more even as the international reference price fell. I wrote then that the final account should show how much of the result came from price, how much from volume, how much from quality mix, and how much from stock dra...