1 of 3
Lead farmers sampling excelsa coffee.
2 of 3
Ian Paterson, managing director ofEquatoria Teak Company (ETC) insouthern South Sudan.
3 of 3
Fields belonging to ETC South Sudan.
Landlocked South Sudan’s economy and security looks obstinately fragile, but the firmness and depth of the soil in some parts of this country of 12.3 million offers good ground for growing a unique coffee variety under a scheme that promises to promote peace and improve livelihoods for hundreds of coffee growers and communities now in desperation due to civil war.
The history of South Sudan, as an independent nation, is probably brief, but the details of the richness of the country’s natural resources, including its topography and climate, runs deep and so does the story of the growing of excelsa coffee in the western Equatoria region along the upper reaches of the White Nile.
The larger Equatoria region, in southern South Sudan, whose topography is defined by the Imatong mountains and Mount Kinyeti with an equatorial climate and dense forests, presents inexhaustible coffee growing opportunities but is currently stifled by a seemingly endless civil conflict.
Specifically, the rainy season, with high humidity and alternating temperatures between the coolest in July (20-30°C) and warmest in March (23-37°C), entices local and international investors keen on growing quality coffee for niche global markets. These conditions are suitable for the growing of excelsa coffee, which is one of the world’s four major coffee varieties and represents approximately 7% of global coffee production.
“The growing conditions here are perfect for excelsa, and our beans have been received positively at cupping events with international buyers,” says Ian Paterson, Equatoria Teak Company (ETC) managing director. (ETC is majority-owned by Agris Ltd., a subsidiary of Maris Ltd.)
Today, this region is not only on record as the cradle of South Sudan’s struggle for freedom dating back to the 1960s but is also offering a glimmer of hope for this huge population that has known nothing but insurgency, underdevelopment, displacement, and abandoned coffee farms. The glimmer is through a unique coffee-growing project that is blended with the search for long-lasting peace, increased investment in agribusiness, and the opening up of the region to international investors and markets.
The “Excelling in Excelsa” project, spearheaded by a partnership of Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) South Sudan, Hummingbird Action for Peace and Development, Interchurch Coordination Committee Development Aid (ICCO) Cooperation, and ETC, is a multipronged initiative to enable Africa’s youngest nation, having gained independence in July 2011, achieve food security, improve incomes for communities, and contribute to national cohesion and development.
The idea to launch the coffee growing program came up when the ETC Agris’ forestry operation team found out there was opportunity after harvesting the teak to engage in “alternative products to provide new sources of employment for the local community and to diversify the business.” The choice by the partnership to focus on coffee as the crop of choice for this project was influenced partly by the region’s history, according to Paterson.
“There is a strong history of coffee production in this region, which tragically ended in the 1980s at the start of the second civil war,” he says. Through the “Excelling in Excelsa” project, six lead coffee farmers have been identified and worked with project experts throughout the trial process, according to Paterson.
“Our local NGO partner, Hummingbird, is now identifying 1,000 farmers, predominantly women and youth, close enough to the company to be able to actively engage with our extension officers and to transport the cherries to our central processing facility,” Paterson added.
The 1,000 contract coffee farmers will be provided with training, extension services, and access to quality inputs to enable them produce excelsa coffee to international standards.
According to Paterson, the implementation of this phase “will provide new jobs, targeted at women and farmers younger than 35, and create an additional 190 farm positions.”
Netherlands enterprise agency RVO is financing the project over a three-year period, but ETC says it is “committed to coffee production for the long-term, having started trials in 2018.”
The project’s inception phase was completed at the end of 2020, and the approval of the process to progress to the implementation stage is underway. The project is structured in such way as to ensure close monitoring along the coffee production value chain from seed to cup, starting with the distribution of quality seedlings from a modern coffee nursery that has been established for subsequent transfer to a model farm that is at the moment trialing different coffee varieties and production protocols.
At the initial stages of the project coming online, ETC says it intends “to buy the coffee from the farmers to guarantee them a market.”
“We will then process the cherries to green beans and work with international traders to access premium international markets,” Paterson explains.
The feedback from the cupping trials with well-known international coffee traders, Paterson says, has been positive “and any coffee enthusiast is welcome to visit us in Nzara.” Nzara is the county in Equatoria region where the project is located.
“Coffee trials have led to initial harvests at three years, so by the end of RVO support, we expect smallholders to be generating revenue and moving towards financial sustainability,” said Paterson. “As more farmers realize greater incomes, we hope more growers are attracted to venture into coffee growing,” he adds. “Across Africa there are very successful models of farmer-owned, farmer-led producer organizations dealing directly with suppliers and buyers, and we would love to see our farmers reach that level of organizational development but for now we will offer direct support.”
Some of the project’s lead farmers say they have seen it all — from growing up in an environment with a semblance of tranquility, where enjoying a cup of coffee was the norm, to periods of acute insecurity that triggered massive displacement and destruction of coffee farms as the civil war ravaged the western Equatoria region.
“As a child, I used to enjoy a taste of raw coffee because of its nice smell, and later a cup of coffee prepared by coffee-growing parents who made the beverage from roasted and ground beans. These are sentimental memories to me,” says Clement Gbiaidi, one of the project lead coffee farmers currently cultivating 3.5 acres of excelsa coffee.
“The coffee we are growing is organic, which is an important aspect of our enterprise — there are no added chemicals in the production stage,” he said.
Before the Second Sudanese Civil War started in 1983, coffee was a major cash crop in western Equatoria, according to Elia Box, another lead farmer from Nzara county.
“In the 1970s and 1980s, our area was a leading coffee producer, people constructed houses and could care for all their children with the money it earned them,” he said. Regrettably, he said, “When the war started, production gradually stopped and the coffee plants were destroyed by wildfire.” The war, Elia adds, not only left many women in the community widowed, caring for children and elderly parents by themselves, but it also created a huge army of young men in dire need of work.
The “Excelling in Excelsa” coffee project is an opportunity for us to create jobs for ourselves, and the training is especially important. We have plenty of fertile land. It is our money, if we are able to make good use of it,” Elia adds.
With a successful teak enterprise and now an emerging and promising coffee growing venture, ETC is convinced the troubled Equatoria region and South Sudan as a whole, hold “huge potential as a major agricultural production hub.”
“Through ‘Excelling in Excelsa,’ we will develop new connections with international markets for a part of the world that has been shut off for too long,” says Ran Kadosh, managing director of Agris Ltd.
ETC expects establishment of a new coffee processing facility on a site already identified as part of the initial phase of launching thriving local coffee industry in South Sudan. It also predicts that the project “will convince new investors to enter this frontier market, boosting economic development.