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The African Development Fund (ADF) has approved a grant of 1.54mn units of account (UA), equivalent to US$2.16mn to finance the strengthening of the capacity building of the Inter-African Coffee Organisation (IACO).

The objective of the project is to build capacity for the IACO and its affiliated coffee regulatory and supervisory institutions in the areas of quality assurance, marketing and export promotion. The project will contribute towards the goal of increasing export earnings and household incomes of operators in the coffee industry by increasing and sustaining the international and domestic market share for African coffee.

The project will upgrade the cup tasting centres in <

  • xml:namespace prefix = st1 />Cameroon, Uganda, Cote d’Ivoire and Zambia to serve as regional quality assurance and training centres. It will improve access to market data by establishing a regional market information system at the IACO head-office in Cote d’Ivoire. During the last year of project implementation, a two-day African forum will be organised in Africa, to showcase the continent’s coffee products to international buyers.

    The project will be implemented in the 25 member countries of IACO. The beneficiaries of the project will be quality regulatory institutions affiliated with Coffee Regulatory and Supervisory institutions in the IACO member countries, Subject Matter Specialists (SMS) who will be trained in appropriate methods in primary processing of coffee. Coffee farmers and processors will in turn, benefit through training from the trained SMS. There are currently 18 such institutions employing 43 tasters, in operation. IACO will also benefit directly from setting up of a Management Information System (MIS) and training of its staff.

    The project will create more jobs and increase the incomes of primary coffee producers, as well as workers engaged in primary processing, the majority of whom are women. By increasing the incomes, the project will contribute to fight poverty especially in rural areas.
    The mandate of the IACO established in 1962 is to assist its member countries through negotiations and consultations for fair, sustainable and remunerative prices for small-scale farmers.

    The ADF grant will finance 85% of the total cost of the project estimated at UA1.81mn equivalent to US$2.54mn. The IACO will cater for the remaining.