The Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority launched a 13.5 million birr Coffee Innovation Fund.
The current global value for the coffee industry is over $200 billion a year. However, in countries like Ethiopia coffee growers and local economies have been largely excluded from the benefits. In order to improve this reality, the Coffee Innovation Fund (CIF) is launched for the second time in four East African countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. The Coffee Innovation Fund 2.0 is continued support for creating opportunities for investment.
The fund aims to enable smallholder coffee businesses and producers to test new ideas that increase the profitability of coffee farmers and ensure a fairer and equitable share in the coffee supply chain. It calls for innovative approaches that promise to improve the production, processing, and marketing of coffee and boost local value creation.
“Innovation helps humans address daily hardships. There are many obstacles and backward practices prohibiting coffee farmers from realizing their full potentials. Modernization of the coffee value chain, specifically in value addition are essential. The government has plans to enable sustainable changes in the lives of the farmers by supporting innovative ideas, processes and projects” said Adugna Debela, head of Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority.