Over half a dozen of the largest coffee industry lobby groups have agreed to forge an alliance to gain bargaining power and deal with hurdles holding coffee farming from showing improvement in yield.

Ethiopia produced 248,000tn coffee last year, shipped out mainly to the United States, Europe and the Middle East.

Seven associations and cooperative unions signed an agreement at the Coffee & Tea Authority headquarters, on Ras Mekonnen Avenue (near Mexico Square), on September 22, 2021. These include the Ethiopian Women in Coffee, the Ethiopian Coffee Roasters Association, the Ethiopian Coffee Growers, Producers & Exporters Association, the Ethiopian Coffee Exporters Association, and the coffee farmers cooperative unions of Oromia, Southern and Sidama regional states. They pledged to strengthen ties and form a single lobby group.

Industry players believe the move will enable them to address major bottlenecks in the coffee sector, including the dispute over the implementation of vertical integration, a system directly connecting suppliers with farmers without the involvement of the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX).

Seven board members from each association or cooperative will be chosen to attend the alliance's first general assembly scheduled for a little over a month. The newly created lobby group hopes to be represented at the Ethiopian Chamber of Commerce & Sectoral Associations.

According to Hussein Ambo (PhD), head of the Coffee Growers, Producers & Exporters Association, the alliance has been in the works for close to four years, which has 150 members.

The reluctance of some of their members and the pandemic has been the cause of the delays. Individuals, private limited companies, associations, and cooperatives involved in the coffee industry are eligible for membership in the alliance, which will be known as the Ethiopian Coffee Association.

Desalegn Jena presides over the Coffee Exporters Association, founded a decade ago and represents over 300 members. He sees the move as a step in the right direction in reversing the scattered and fragmented lobby groups unable to advance the industry's interests for policy changes.