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Ethiopian traditional coffee making; local woman preparing bunna cafe in the city of Adis Zemen, Ethiopia.
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Two Ethiopian men drink Ethiopian coffee on the streets of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Coffee consumption in some of Africa’s key producing countries, except for Ethiopia, remains below the average 30.2% global domestic consumption rate reported in 2021 by the International Coffee Organization (ICO). ICO says non-producing countries consumed an estimated 69.8% of the total coffee produced in the 2020/2021 marketing year (MY), some of it from leading Africa producers such as Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and even Tanzania.
Pricing of a cup of coffee in producer countries, the recent outbreak of Covid-19, and the uncertainty the pandemic created in the industry continues to impact ongoing efforts to increase domestic consumption across the African continent but particularly in key coffee producing markets.
“Local consumption will remain depressed in MY 2020/21 due to the impact of Covid-19 on the restaurant and hospitality sectors,” says United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Foreign Agricultural Service in the latest report on Kenya’s coffee production trends. The East African country should make recovery from the impact of Covid-19 on domestic consumption from the 36,000 bags (60kg) to 43,000 bags in tandem with the recovery of Kenya’s tourism.
USDA observes in a separate but similar report on Uganda, the landlocked coffee producing country’s domestic coffee consumption was negatively affected by the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic that disrupted local coffee consumption
promotional campaigns “after hotels, restaurants, and other eateries were forced to close to comply with the lockdown and social distancing directives by the government.”
“It is neither clear for how long these measures will be in place, nor how consumers will respond once the re-opening is implemented but it is also likely that due to the purchasing power decline coming from Covid-19, consumers will keep away from premium coffees in favor of cheaper lower- end coffees,” the report says.
Elsewhere, Ethiopia stands out as an example worth emulating when it comes to domestic coffee consumption as coffee consumers. This landlocked landlocked Horn of Africa country of 117 million people consumer more than 50% of the total coffee produced locally.
Other estimates indicate Ethiopia’s domestic coffee consumption could go as high as 55% of the country’s annual green coffee production. For the 2021/2022 market year, Ethiopia is expected to produce an estimated 457,200MT of coffee. In the 2020/2021 period, domestic coffee consumers in Ethiopia guzzled 218,400MT of coffee up from the 215,000MT consumed in 2019/2020. The domestic consumption volumes are set to increase to 220,800MT in the 2021/2022 period.
The high levels of local coffee consumption could partly be attributed to Ethiopia’s deliberate effort in keeping the price of the country’s arabica coffee “usually higher than international price.”
But in Tanzania, which produced 1.35 million bags (60kg) of coffee in 2020/2021, domestic coffee consumption seems to have been suppressed by high prevalence for tea among locals.
“There is change in domestic coffee consumption due to consumer preference for tea, which comes in part due to the high price of coffee compared to the price of tea,” says a report analyzing the coffee consumption trends in Tanzania by USDA. Despite ongoing effort by Tanzania Coffee Board to promote domestic coffee consumption, market surveys indicate the annual per capita coffee consumption in Tanzania is only 0.06kg with only 7% of the country’s total coffee production consumed within the country. This local consumption levels could as well be at risk of declining as ICO cautions “world coffee consumption is expected to decrease by 0.5% to 167.81 million bags as the covid-19 pandemic continues to put pressure on the global economy and greatly limits out-of-home coffee consumption.”
Meanwhile, in Rwanda, the National Agricultural Export Development Board (NAEB), a government agency in the Ministry of Agriculture that promotes exports of agricultural and livestock products, partnered with private Rwandan companies to market the concept of domestic coffee consumption to increase uptake of the country’s unique coffee brands.
For instance, startups such as Stafford Coffee Brewers Company, launched by millennial coffee entrepreneur Stafford Rubagumya, pushes even further the idea of domestic coffee consumption in Rwanda with good pricing of a cup of coffee to make it affordable to as many Rwandese consumers as possible.
“It is imperative to develop the local coffee business in terms of consumption among the ordinary folks to consume Rwandan coffee, particularly the youth who form the bulk of the population,” said Claude Bizimana, NAEB’s c.e.o., in a previous statement.
“A substantial local market will help stabilize local producer prices and guarantee the farmers’ prosperity,” he said.
Currently, to support the domestic consumption campaign, Rwanda partnered with the InterAfrican Coffee Organization (IACO) in an initiative to make the coffee value chain in the country “both inclusive and granular.”
The initiative launched in 2019 promotes domestic coffee consumption across the Africa continent enhancing the transformation of the value chain according to IACO. The organization, which supports the African Union’s objective of commodity-led industrialization across the region, works with Rwanda to support the domestic consumption initiatives through Rwanda-based coffee startups especially coffee cafés. For example, in
Two Ethiopian men drink Ethiopian coffee on the streets of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
2021 IACO, in partnership with NAEB, supported Stafford Coffee Box to launch more coffee cafés in the different universities in Rwanda.
“One exciting feature of the Stafford Coffee Box is that it provides employment opportunities for young women and supports their academic pursuits by supplementing their tuition expenses,” said Fred Frederick Kawuma, IACO’s secretary general emeritus. “IACO is engaging in similar initiatives in different African countries, hoping to get Africa’s young population to appreciate the beloved African beverage that has won the hearts of consumers around the world,” he adds.
According to Kawuma IACO engages in similar initiatives in different African countries, “hoping to get Africa’s young population to appreciate the beloved African beverage that has won the hearts of consumers around the world.”
Although the initiative is yet to catch up in Uganda, the country’s Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) nevertheless led a campaign to increase domestic coffee consumption alongside seeking new export markets.
Currently, Uganda’s domestic consumption is 244,800 (60-kg bags) with a per capita consumption of approximately 1.4 kg, a trend that could be attributed to UCDA’s promotional strategies such as the ramping up participation in coffee on the road shows, barista championships, and Taste of Harvest competitions.
Globally, ICO, in its 2019/2020 global coffee report said overall coffee consumption grows annually at 1.7% since 2014/2015 but was set to decline for the first time since the downturn of 0.4% in 2008/09, “reaching 164.5 million bags in coffee year 2019/20, declining by 2.4% from the previous coffee year.”
Africa stands out as the only coffee producing region where demand did not drop during the 2019/20 period at 12.02 million bags unlike other regions such as Europe and North America, Asia and Oceania, Central America and Mexico, and South America where demand and consumption declined.
The push for increased domestic coffee consumption in Africa is seen as an option to cushion “smallholder farmers against green coffee price volatility and will lead to better retention of coffee incomes in the producing countries,”accordingtoCABI,anot-for-profitorganizationthatfocuseson improving people’s livelihoods globally by provision of relevant information and application of scientific expertise.
Growth in domestic coffee consumption also leads to increased job creation and increased investment.
But as CABI aptly puts it, Africa, and any other coffee producing market, can only fully reap the benefits of increased domestic and coffee consumption through initiatives such as “building a critical mass of specialized apprentices, in areas such as barista, alongside investment.”