African Woman and Ownership in Coffee (AWOC) Project

Background and Justification

Industrial consumers such as the United States $100Bn coffee retail market are a boom and prosperous, because of the courage of the smallholder cottage producers in the extremely impoverished 3rd world rural tropical communities. These smallholdings produce too small quantities as little as forty pounds (40lb) of green bean and have to bulk together to consolidate the much-needed global demand volumes usually between 153 – 167 million 60kg bags per year. For Africa, majority of these micro producers are women led, ranging from 150 – 400 coffee tree plot-farms. The 150 – 400 coffee tree plot-farm producer infrastructure, depend on these seasonal coffee micro-lots for their social security; implying they harvest, process, store and only sell to obtain food, medical care and child education. However, they lack prompt, adequate and proportional incentive rewarding niche markets. The available options only pay seventy cents per pound of green bean which in turn translates into $60 for roaster’s whole bean on the shelves of major retail stores or $240 from serving espressos and cappuccinos in retail structures like Starbucks. Retail giants cannot be blamed for this trade, but it is illogical.

Farmers are desperate, demoralized, and some are abandoning and cutting down their coffee shambas. This worries and ruins the efforts in the global coffee production systems, and the consequences are; won’t spare the end user or industrial consumer world, and the giant multinational commodity companies.

There is urgent need to empower the African Woman to full realization in ownership and profitability of their little production volumes. The need for the women growers to be enfranchised, elevated even higher to the negotiation table as relevant actors in as many roles and decision making about their commodity as possible.

The enormous coffee volumes needed, the eruption of coffee billionaires, global supply chain sustainability, batch roasters revolution, coffeehouses proliferation, coffee fests, baristas and roasters competition wouldn’t have been, had it not been for the African Women and their 150 – 400 coffee tree plot-farm. Africa Coffee Bureau using its ACB Entrepreneurship Bureau, it is nurturing a Private Label and brand that aspires to reward premium incentives and price that means most to the 40lb green bean harvest annually per household.