The key to reviving African coffee production lies in the organisation and the empowerment of national value chains. This is done through ongoing and evolving targeted high-level technical support.

Three Phases to Systemic Change

At the invitation of national coffee actors, Café Africa typically intervenes in three phases in close collaboration with stakeholders: Analysis & Diagnosis, Strategy Development, and Implementation & Support.

While the full benefit of this process takes several years, some outcomes, such as bringing stakeholders together in an annual meeting, organising a steering committee, or focusing extension service effort on coffee in key districts, provide more immediate gains. The ultimate indicator of the impact of a shared vision and the implementation of a strategic plan for the sector will come through the growth in export volumes and values.

1: Multi-Stakeholder Engagement

Café Africa supports a multi-stakeholder participatory process to bring all actors of the value chain together to create a common sector-wide diagnostic, from the farmer to the exporter. Stemming from this situational analysis, together we develop a common strategy for reviving the national coffee sector with a work programme that is integrated into the national agricultural policy.

2: Supporting Common Strategy

Building on the foundation of common goals, Café Africa provides technical support to multi-stakeholders who participate in national initiatives. This way, it is each member of the value chain who implements their own national coffee strategies. Partnerships and networks forged in this common strategy can:

• strengthen research and development linkages
• facilitate technology transfer
• improve agricultural practices
• introduce state of the art coffee processing technologies
• provide quality enhancement
• contribute to marketing
• increase sales on international markets, including the specialty market

3: Ongoing Technical Support

When local stakeholders have limited capacity, Café Africa helps run targeted pilot projects with high added value and a potential for replication. These are implemented in close collaboration with actors along the coffee value chain in order to build local and national industry capacity.

Café Africa has never intended to function as an implementer; rather, as a catalyst for change throughout the coffee sector, implementing within limits and only when it feeds into the vision as a whole.