STiR coffee and tea magazine

34 STiR coffee and tea / Issue 2, 2022 (April / May) By Shem Oirere C Africa's Drive to Africa's Drive to Grow Domestic Grow Domestic Coffee Consumption Coffee Consumption offee 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 uncertain- ty the pandemic created in the industry continues to impact ongoing efforts to increase domestic con- sumption across the African continent but particu- larly 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 Unit- ed States Department of Agriculture's (USDA's) Foreign Agricultural Service in the latest report on Kenya's coffee production trends. The East Afri- can country should make recovery from the im- pact 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 re- port on Uganda, the landlocked coffee produc- ing country's domestic coffee consumption was negatively affected by the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic that disrupted local coffee consumption Ethiopian traditional coffee making; local woman preparing bunna cafe in the city of Adis Zemen, Ethiopia. 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 cof- fee consumption as coffee consumers. This land- locked 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 do- mestic 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."

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