President Yoweri Museveni has rallied African leaders to adopt value addition if the continent is to fully benefit from coffee exports.
Museveni who was speaking during the opening of the G-25 Coffee Summit in Kampala on August 8, said although Africa was producing a lot of coffee, it was earning minimal on the global market compared to other continents.
“Out of the US$460 billion global coffee value, the coffee producing countries only take US$25 billion and Africa gets only US$2.4billion, with US$845 million going to Uganda because we are now producing 8million, 60kgs each, bags plus now. A non-coffee producing country like Germany, earns US$6.85billion,” Museveni said.
He added that for the past 60 years, he had been probing what he termed “global parasitic system” whereby Africa was producing raw materials for “cleverer people in the world to add value to those raw materials and get much more value from them.”
“A kg of bean coffee of good quality, may go for US$2.5. The same quantity of coffee roasted, ground and packaged may go for US$40. It is not only the loss of money per kg. It is also the loss of jobs. If you take the whole spectrum of raw-materials from agriculture, minerals, forest products, etc., the loss to Africa is massive,” the president said.
Museveni said Africa, “the raw-materials producers, we need to conduct internal struggles in our respective countries to add value to these raw materials, including coffee ─ so that we earn more from our sweat and create more jobs for our youth instead of dying in the Mediterranean going to Europe.”
Sahle-Work Zewde, the President Republic of Ethiopia, re-echoed Museveni’s call, adding: “With just simple value addition, it is possible to increase the benefit of small holder farmers and enable them to get fair share of their effort. It trading companies to support producing farmers technically and financially.”
Kenya’s representative, Musalia Mudavadi who is the Prime Cabinet Secretary said Africa exports 11 million bags of mainly raw coffee and imports more value added coffee and in the process, the continent losses much on job creation and foreign exchange.
Meanwhile, Jan Sadek, the Ambassador of the European Union (EU) to Uganda, said they acknowledge the importance of investing in coffee value addition.
“The EU is prepared to support this growth in all possible sustainable ways, as we have been doing in Uganda, Rwanda and in East Africa as a region,” Sadek said.
He added that EU was prepared to look beyond the old paradigms by supporting the proposals of the G-25 to process coffee for local markets in Africa.
“It is important to recall that there are no import tariffs or taxes at the EU border on coffee coming from Africa… whether processed or not,” he said.
The theme for the Summit of the 25 African Coffee Producing Countries is, “Transforming the African Coffee Sector through Value Addition.”
The 25 coffee-growing nations in Africa are currently Angola, Benin, Burundi, Cameroon, Congo, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The summit comes hardly a week after President Yoweri Museveni opened the Uganda Trade Hub in Belgrade, Serbia.
The hub will serve to market Uganda’s 13 key products, which include coffee as the leading export.
