AYV News, August 22, 2023
Boosting Export Earnings from Cocoa and Coffee is a Critical Part of His Excellency President Dr. Julius Maada Bio’s Feed Salone Program.
President Bio’s Feed Salone Program is not only about growing what we eat. Yes, it will prioritise increasing productivity in our key staples to shore up our food self-sufficiency and sovereignty. Another important objective of Feed Salone is to boost export earnings from agriculture.
When we sell what we produce to the rest of the world, we increase the demand for the Leones, and hence its value. We build our foreign reserves, and the Leones appreciates, which, given our huge trade imbalance will be good for the economy and cost of living for consumers.
Mining and fisheries remain the dominant sources of our export earnings. Even though agriculture value add to the Sierra Leone GDP is about 57%, the sector’s share to the value of export is below 10%. A key objective for Feed Salone is to increase this share.
In addition to oil palm, cocoa and coffee are critical to our strategy for boosting export earnings. Export of cocoa has picked up as private sector activity in the value chain has gained momentum with the opening of Sierra Leone’s first cocoa processing factory by Capitol Foods Limited, which can process up to 4,000 tons per year.
There are also a handful of large aggregators that export cocoa beans. Cocoa bean export peaked at close to 40,000 metric tons in 2017, according to FAO Stats, which is about six times more than pre-war glory days. We have also exported cocoa powder more recently.
Although the historical trajectory of cocoa and coffee production are similar in Sierra Leone, the take-off we are seeing in cocoa is not yet happening in coffee. Post-war, coffee production plummeted and remained low. In 1972, we exported over 14,000 metric tons of green coffee beans, whereas in 2021, we exported just over 1,800 metric tons. There is also little value addition or processing taking place in the sector.
I recently visited the site of Coffee Couriers, one of the few businesses roasting coffee grown in Sierra Leone for local sales and export. Their turnover is small, roasting about 2 metric tons per year, and exporting about a quarter of this. The business has been in existence for over seven years but has struggled to increase its turnover significantly.
Their main clients include hotels and supermarkets in Freetown. They export through a sole agent in Italy. The CEO, Hannah Elizabeth Tarawally told me the constraints her business faces include lack of capital, prohibitive cost of lending from banks, excessive costs for transport and handling, and a stiff competition for coffee beans from larger aggregators that mostly buy and export without processing.
Hannah has agents aggregating for her in three districts, but because her margins remain small, she is unable to provide the advance to farmers that larger aggregators provide.
There is hope for Coffee Couriers though, as the business plans to cultivate their own coffee. More exciting is that they plan to experiment with Coffea Stenophylla, a rare coffee variety, native to Sierra Leone. Researchers who “rediscovered” the coffee variety say it holds promise for climate proofing the coffee industry because Coffea Stenophylla is heat tolerant, and grows at much lower altitudes, compared to other varieties we are familiar with. But more importantly, it has superior flavours, with potential to be a high-end niche.
Coffea Stenophylla has been tested and is now being multiplied in at least three districts in Sierra Leone. Our goal is to improve the yield to grow this at commercial scale.
The Feed Salone program will focus on increasing coffee production and provide support systems for aggregation so that farmers can get a decent price for their produce. It will also provide incentives for value addition, like roasting and packaging, so that we can have more businesses like Coffee Couriers thriving in the sector in Sierra Leone.
