STiR coffee and tea magazine

58 STiR coffee and tea / Issue 4, 2021 (August / September) By Shem Oirere C AFCA Expo; Sampling Coffee Making Machines at a previous AFCA Expo. Some of coffee making machines at Tomoca Caffe in Ethiopia; Credit, Tomoca. offee consumption on the African continent been increasing at annual rate of 3.2% that saw the volumes surge from 4.9 million bags in 1990/91 to an estimated 11.67 million bags in 2019/20, nearly 238% over the 30-year period, providing opportunities for producers, food service chains, office, and commercial working stations to acquire production and processing equipment as well as dispensing and coffee-making machines. The region's coffee consumption – 7% of the global total consumption – is also further likely to trigger growth in demand for dispensing and coffee-making machines especially in top key consuming markets of Ethiopia, Uganda, Algeria, Morocco, South Africa, and Egypt that account for up to 70% of the continent's coffee consumption. "It is a fact that African countries import a lot of processed coffee from Europe and the Middle East," says Fredrick Kawuma, immediate former secretary general of the Inter-African Coffee Organization (IACO). Yet, Kawuma observes there is prolif- eration of cafés in Africa major cities hence raising optimism on a rise in demand for a wide range of manual, semi-automatic, or fully automatic coffee machines to support anticipated increase in coffee consumption. There is optimism that demand for coffee machines used in Africa's entire coffee value chain from farm to cup could actually improve with Dr Kawuuma citing the "the budding entrepreneurial movement in the African coffee value chain buttressed by the emerging African middle-class that offer great promise for the coffee industry." A change in demand for coffee machines supporting Africa's coffee value chain could largely be influenced by the outcome of the push to transform Africa's coffee value chain but which Kawuma says is a tall order due to "the scarcity of resources, as a result of the several competing priorities for funding by our member governments." He proposes for a paradigm shift and innovative ways of addressing the challenge such as "addressing the issue of efficiency in the value chain, beginning with farm-level pro- ductivity, value addition, and quality concerns." But even before reaching the coffee consumption phase, production especially in the 25 African leading producers such as Burundi, Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Equatorial Guinea, Liberia, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Togo, Zambia, and Zimbabwe saw their average pre-Covid-19 output grow on an annual average of 2% for nearly 10 years albeit with an anticipated decline of nearly 0.2% to 18.83 million Africa's Demand for Coffee Equipment and Machinery Growing bags in 2019/2020. Ethiopia and Uganda account for more than 60% of the conti- nent's production, and together with Ke- nya, Tanzania, and Rwanda represent the largest coffee exporting region in Africa. "With the projected improvement in the total coffee output in Africa, the four coffee value chain phases -- cultivation, processing, roasting, and consumption -- cultivation is likely to dominate the re- gion's coffee processing equipment/ma- chinery market," says James Odhiambo of Equatorial Teak Company (ETC), a South Sudanese sustainable plantation and teak grower supported by Agris, a subsidiary of Maris Ltd, an invest- ment holding company with more than US$100m under management across sub-Saharan Africa. He says the use of modern coffee processing equipment and machines in Africa's coffee sector is currently being driven by "business sustainability in costs of production, customer demands, and environmental concerns." Moreover, he says "in some African countries tax on agriculture and processing machinery is exempted and this encourage purchase and installation of new machines and equipment." In addition, there is an increasing concern on environmental sustainability and because "some policies restrict wa- ter use, this will increase uptake of im- proved coffee processing equipment and machinery." Despite the optimism on the potential of Africa's coffee market for manufactur- ers and suppliers of equipment/machines to support the coffee value chain in the region, there are hurdles that producers, corporates, and other investors eager to expand this market such as the high capital investment required in acquisition Matthias Grabe, managing director, North East Africa at Buhler Group.

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