A manual written for producers of robusta coffee in and around Ghana offers a new tool with special relevance to post-harvest processors. The free book aims to help the coffee sector in West Africa increase output and quality at a time when robusta beans are in rising demand.
Titled Handbook on Coffee Processing for Farmers and Agro-Processors, the free manual was published in a collaboration led by the International Trade Centre's Alliances for Action Initiative together with the Robusta Coffee Agency of Africa and Madagascar (ACRAM), Ghana's Food Research Institute, the Coffee Federation of Ghana, and the European Union's Africa Caribbean Pacific Business-Friendly program. The contents are based in part on data and information from ITC's Coffee Guide, 4th Edition.
West Africa, where robusta originated, has gradually declined in the world rank of canephora production. The region, which produced 51% of the crop in the 1960s and 1970s, today accounts for only 6%. Brazil and Vietnam now grow 80% of it. Ghana ranks 42nd in coffee production.
Ghana's agricultural exports are heavily weighted toward cocoa. It's the world's second-leading producer. But rising prices for robusta create an opportunity to help diversify agriculture there and elsewhere in West Africa. Farmers are already putting land back under coffee and investing in equipment.
The new initiative involves not just exports. Ghana aims to lift domestic consumption of coffee while increasing capacity, expertise, and processing infrastructure at home.
"The purpose of this handbook is to look at how we can best add value to coffee," said Charles Tortoe, director of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research — Food Research Institute (CSIR–FRI). "Post-harvesting processes are a form of value-addition — a crucial sector that we need to bring on board, beyond the development of production."
Larry Attipoe, Ghana coordinator for ITC-Alliances for Action, noted that there is a large and growing global market for premium robusta coffee. The manual guides industry players to achieve the quality they need to compete on the international market.
"We are involved in this because we see coffee as an important value chain for our country, with the opportunity to develop coffee communities," he said.
The ACP Business-Friendly Program is funded by the European Union and the Organization of African, Caribbean, and Pacific States (OACPS) and jointly implemented by ITC’s Alliances for Action, the World Bank and UNIDO. It seeks to improve the ability of agribusiness firms in ACP countries to compete, grow and prosper in domestic, regional, and international markets.
Through the Alliances for Action approach, the program promotes inclusive and sustainable agricultural value chains that value all stakeholders from farm to shelf. In Ghana, the ACB Business-Friendly {rogram focuses on revamping the coffee sector by providing support to coffee value chain actors, farmer cooperatives, and support institutions through capacity-building, training on good agricultural practices, harvesting techniques, coffee farm establishment, value addition enhancement and market.
Alliances for Action is an ITC initiative that seeks to transform food systems through producer partnerships that cultivate ethical, climate-smart, sustainable agricultural value chains.
You can download the manual in a free PDF at https://intracen.org/file/westafricapostharvestingmanualpdf