This archive report was first published on 7 November 2019.
Published on November 7, 2019, Nairobi — Africa's coffee industry has been in decline since the 1970s, with the continent's contribution to the global coffee trade dwindling significantly. However, a new initiative aims to change this trend.
The Inter African Coffee Organisation (IACO), Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International (CABI), and the International Coffee Organization (ICO) have joined forces to launch the $950m Africa Coffee Facility (ACF) to boost Africa's coffee industry and achieve a 40 percent increase in high-quality exports worth $5 billion a year.
According to Dr. Fred Kawuma, Secretary General of the IACO, the ACF is an ambitious fund that seeks to attract private and public sector investment to transform Africa's coffee industry from a subsistence to a commercial or entrepreneurial approach.
The ACF aims to transform Africa's coffee production, currently 10 percent of the global coffee market, into a vibrant and resilient industry again. Coffee is a primary source of income for more than 12 million households in Africa and contributes a significant proportion of tax income in several countries.
Key aims of the ACF include investing $500m on building a sustainable coffee supply, $100m on improving demand, market linkages, and investments, $200m on climate change adaptation and environmentally resilient practices, and $150m on promoting knowledge management and dissemination.
Partners and potential donors at the forum heard how Africa's coffee value chain must see vast improvements in production and cooperative systems to compete in the global market place.
Dr. Denis Seudieu, Chief Economist of the International Coffee Organization, noted that although many initiatives have been taken in some countries, many challenges still hamper the achievement of a sustainable coffee sector in Africa.
The ACF plans to enable 50 percent of farmers to plant climate-smart materials as part of a strategy to see one out of every 5 coffee farmer adopting climate smart productive systems.
