Ethiopia coffee industry value chain analysis (USAID / COMPETE 2010)
Profiling the actors, their interactions, costs, constraints and opportunities.
The birthplace of coffee, Ethiopia is home to some of the finest coffees in the world. Ethiopia is currently the top African coffee exporter and ranked sixth in the global market. Ethiopia exported 170,888 tons of coffee and earned $525.2 million during June/July 2007/08 period compared with 176,390 tons worth $424.2 million in 2006/07.
Coffee generates 70 percent of Ethiopia‘s foreign exchange earnings and provides livelihoods for 15 million Ethiopian smallholder farmers. The coffee economy employs several hundred thousand workers in processing either red cherry (key eshet) or dried pulp coffee (jenfel) in hundreds of washing stations and hulling mills around the country.
Government institutions are responsible for the state coffee plantations with approximately 8000 permanent employees and an estimated 50,000 casual jobs annually. Coffee generates a considerable number of jobs on-farm, in the processing plants and in the transport sector. In Ethiopia, coffee constitutes a very important source of casual employment for many poor people and most agro-processing employees are women.