/ 5 July 2007

Africa must capitalise on coffee demand surge

Surging demand for African coffee is a unique opportunity for producers, but they must not let quality slip or assume processing is the best way to capitalise on it, a coffee official said on Thursday.

East African Fine Coffees Association director Philip Gitao told Reuters Africa’s market has come of age.

”Africa has become the sexy place for buying coffee,” he said. ”We have finally got the world’s attention and now it’s about riding this wave, making sure quality doesn’t slip.”

Coffee growers such as Uganda, Rwanda and Ethiopia are enjoying a boom time as global prices soar and major buyers seek higher grade and speciality coffees.

Producers say East African countries have a particular advantage of high altitudes and smaller-scale farms, enabling them to better look after coffee trees than some bigger producers like Brazil.

Gitao said African coffee was increasingly used to upgrade blends.

Uganda, which has become a leading player in high quality Robusta since a political crisis in the former top producer Côte d’Ivoire, said its earnings grew 65% to $17,91-million in May this year on last year.

”Uganda now has some of the best Robustas in the world. Demand for Ugandan is really on the rise,” Gitao said.

But he warned that buoyant demand had encouraged farmers to harvest prematurely to cash in on prices, which would in the long run hurt demand by damaging quality.

”We are training farmers to pick ripe beans to mitigate this,” he said.

Roasting beans

Big buyers like Starbucks are targeting Africa and the coffee chain said in February it plans to double African imports over the next two years.

”Starbucks want to come in to Africa and get involved in production. One thing that has pushed this trend is the speciality movement — coffees grown in unique areas,” Gitao said.

Starbucks launched a specialty Rwandan coffee last year and will soon begin marketing Ethiopian brands after resolving a licensing dispute with Africa’s top producer.

Growing demand has sparked debate over whether African countries, which mostly sell raw beans, should process coffee.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has said Africa will only develop if it sells finished products, not raw materials.

”The president talks about value addition … There’s a misconception within Africa that we need to roast our coffee to add value,” he said, adding that this was unviable because roasting shortened shelf life.

”Shipping coffee from Uganda to America will take a month and half. By the time the roasted coffee’s at the port, it’s already stale,” Gitao said.

Instant coffee could work, but still high taxes on processed products in Western countries made this a tough market to break into.

He said growing, washing and drying coffee with more care would add greater value.

Ugandan producers have set up coffee houses in China, where they would roast on site and sell directly to consumers and that this had proved successful, he said. – Reuters