Africa's share of global coffee production is dropping at a time when consumption is growing and farmers need government support to ensure the continent does not miss out on potential higher earnings in the future, delegates at a coffee conference said on Thursday.
Coffee is an important crop on the continent, bringing in hard currency and creating jobs in producer nations from Rwanda to Ivory Coast. The continent's share of world coffee production slipped to 14 percent in the 2012/13 crop year from a quarter in 1989, the Kenyan minister of agriculture Felix Koskei told a regional conference.
Producers on the continent, who grow both Arabica and Robusta, produced 16.7 million bags of coffee in 2012/13 from 19.1 million bags in 1989 even as global production rose to a high of 146.8 million in 2012/13, Koskei said. "The decline in our production is happening against a backdrop of an increase in world coffee consumption which is growing at an average of 2 percent," Koskei told the annual conference of African Fine Coffee Association (AFCA).
Over the medium-term, Africa could miss out on a potential boom in prices from a projected shortage of coffee, said Abdullah Bagersh, chairman of AFCA's board. Delegates at the meeting in the Kenyan capital blamed poor policies by government that do not take farmers' welfare into consideration. In Kenya's coffee growing central highlands, some coffee estates have chopped down their trees in favour of real estate, which has been offering better returns.
Kenya is pursuing initiatives to boost production, including the establishment of a trademark for Kenyan coffee, to give it an identity and spur demand among end consumers, who are usually willing to pay more at western coffee chain outlets than bulk traders and roasters. Abdullah, whose own country of Ethiopia has been held up as a model for others on the continent due to its growing annual output, said governments needed to support the industry in a robust manner.