The African Development Bank (AfDB) has made a grant of $2,2-million to the Inter-African Coffee Organisation (IACO) to boost its capacity, a statement said here Monday.
The 25-nation group is to use the grant from the Bank’s development fund to improve the quality and marketing of African coffee to boost export receipts and the incomes of coffee producers, the AfDB statement said.
Regional quality control centers in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Uganda and Zambia are to be upgraded with the grant, and a regional data bank will be set up at the IACO’s headquarters in Ivory Coast.
A forum is planned at an African venue to showcase African coffee products for international buyers, the statement said.
The grant agreement was signed in Tunis by AfDB Vice President Olabisi Ogunjobi and OIAC secretary general Joseta Sacko. Ogunjobi noted that coffee brings in 10%of IACO member states’ foreign exchange earnings, totalling some four billion dollars per year.
He lamented however that exports have fallen by 19% since 1996 and 30% since 1970.
For her part Sacko said the AfDB grant would ”allow the necessary actions to be taken to revive the coffee sector to the benefit of producers.”
She added: ”If we do nothing, we will quite simply disappear.”
Set up in 1962, the IACO negotiates fair and sustainable prices for small coffee farmers.
Its 25 member states are Angola, Benin, Burundi, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. – AFP
