Poor Farmer

Yan Liang China View June 15, 2008 LUANDA, (Xinhua) -- The Angolan government has recently approved a policy to finance coffee farmers in order to promote coffee cultivation, a senior government official said at the weekend. During his inspection visit to Mucaba, a major coffee growing region in northwestern Angola, at the weekend, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Afonso Pedro Canga told local coffee growers that the government has worked out a program to finance the revival of coffee production in the country. He said the government will carry out the program on the basis of granting micro-credits to coffee growers so as to help them prepare for the coming coffee harvest season and multiply cultivation of coffee in the near future to revive coffee production in the country. "The government has a program of trading and supporting coffee production," he said, stressing that the government is doing its best to help coffee growers to promote coffee production. He ad...

Ethiopia: Intellectual Property Seen Raising Country's Revenues The Daily Monitor (via All Africa) Addis Ababa June 09, 2008 A key report showing how African firms can retain profits said on Friday Ethiopia could set an example on how best to expolit intellectual property to raise export income and alleviate poverty. The report found that effective intellectual property strategies can raise African producers' incomes by up to 320 percent, compared to traditional aid models, which can raise incomes by only about 1.6 percent a year. Light Years IP studied 14 product sectors,and found that some sectors have the potential to increase export income from $1.1 billion per year to between $2.5 billion and $3.5 billion per year. Among the products researched were Ethiopian fine coffee Ethiopian leather, Kenyan tea, Sudanese cotton, and Malian mudcloth. The report outlined a number of areas where African countries could receive more of the value from their products. For instance, Ethiop...

Dominique Patton Business Daily (via AllAfrica ) June 05, 2008 Global sales of fairtrade products jumped by 47 per cent last year, as ethically produced flowers, coffee and other goods reached new markets. Consumers spent more than 2.3 billion on fairtrade goods during 2007, shows a new report from the fairtrade Labelling Organisation (FLO), with premiums earned on the products going to more than 1.5 million producers and workers in 58 countries. Sales have grown especially fast in fairtrade juices, which have almost quadrupled. Fairtrade bananas have increased by 72 per cent while coffee, the first and one of the most established fairtrade products, increased at a steadier pace of 19 per cent. The rapid growth in demand for fairtrade goods is part of a rising trend in ethical awareness in the West. The fairtrade label can only be applied to products that have been certified as ethical, by providing growers with a minimum price for their crop and a premium that is invested in communi...

Interesting insight; definetely worth the attention! Sara-Christine Gemson tries to reconcile corporate profits and corporate promises By Sara-Christine Gemson Cherwell – Oxford University Student Newspaper May 15, 2008 As far back as 1970, the highly influential Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman argued that for the benefit of society as a whole, the primary concern of business should be business, not social responsibility. It is perhaps unsurprising that free-market economists such as Friedman and Smith would be dismissive of corporate social responsibility. What is interesting is that the ethical concern that may appear to be a contemporary phenomenon is in fact not a new consideration. What has changed is the attention that it is getting. With NGO campaigns unveiling unethical business practices, and social and environmental concerns becoming important factors in consumer choice, corporations can no longer afford to dismiss their duty to the community. The World Bank Gr...

The Times May 14, 2008 Consumer behaviour might be something with which we are all familiar, but in many instances it remains somewhat of a mystery. If consumers could be read like an open book, then there would be no unsuccessful ad campaigns. So it’s always useful when research comes out that throws light on the kind of issues which tend - usually - to be the province of assumption and conjecture. Take corporate social investment. Does it actually pay off? Do consumers really reward brands that take care to manufacture their products in an ethical or sustainable way? (For example, Starbucks has started to advertise their ethical relationships with coffee growers in third world countries; locally, Woolworths sells pricey pesto produced at a hydroponics project in Beaufort West…it’s been so long since I last got to use alliteration so shamelessly.) Surely, consumer demand should be a major driver of ethical corporate behaviour - so that demand should go straight to the bottom line. No...

Nation Casts Its Coffee As a Luxury Brand, Strikes a Starbucks Deal Brandhouse Ethiopia hopes its new 'e' logo will help elevate its coffee. Pic: Courtesy of WSJ The world's biggest coffee chain hasn't decided how or if it will use the new logos, said Dub Hay, Starbucks' senior vice president for coffee and procurement. - WSJ By AARON O. PATRICK The Wall Street Journal ; Page B7 May 15, 2008 A small design firm here was recently hired by an unusual client with an unconventional request: The Ethiopian government commissioned Brandhouse to come up with a logo that will make consumers feel like they are drinking a luxury when they have Ethiopian coffee. This month, the Ethiopian government is releasing the logos for three varieties of Ethiopian coffee beans that it hopes will eventually appear from the burlap sacks that are used to transport coffee beans to coffee cups in cafes. It is the first time the country has introduced a brand for its major export. The Ethiopian...

Also see updated Timeline of the Starbucks-Ethiopia dispute Afriquenligne May 8, 2008 Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - In a bid to promote its fine coffee exports, Ethiopia has launched an innovative and radical brand management programme that is pegged to the East African country's distinctive coffees, according to the Ethiopian Intellectual Property Office (IPO). It is the first time that an African nation has undertaken such a contemporary approach to developing its economy through brand management, Ethiopian News Agency (ENA) reported Thursday, quoting the IPO. The launch of the programme took place on the sidelines of the just ended 20th Annual Conference of Specialty Coffees Association of America in Minneapolis, USA. Ethiopia, the origin of coffee beans, exports around 177,000 tonnes of coffee a year, representing about 15 percent of the world's production. However, it is only recently that the country woke to international promotion of its famous fine coffees. Accord...