Somalians buying khat from Ethiopia are subjected to double the price they used to pay after officials at the Ministry of Trade & Regional Integration put a price threshold of 10 dollars for a kilo. It is a change federal authorities have made in four decades.

A letter signed by Gebremeskel Chala, state minister for Trade, notified the decision two weeks ago of the changes to the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE), the Ministry of Revenues and the Customs Commission. The Ministry experts, alongside their colleagues from the central bank and Dire Dawa Trade & Investment Bureau, conducted a study in the East and West Hararghe zones of the Oromia Regional State before raising the floor price.

The study shows the cash crop has high demands in the domestic and foreign markets, says Mesfin Abebe, director of agricultural crop exports and marketing at the Ministry. Khat is popular in East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, with up to 10 million people consuming it daily.

Ethiopia is the leading khat producer globally, with its southeastern belt covering the largest area of khat farms.

Khat cultivation and distribution have increased rapidly despite official reluctance to promote marketing and consumption. Over the past decade, annual harvests increased three-fold, registering a little more than three million quintals last year. The area covered by the cash crop jumped by more than 200pc over the past 10 years, reaching 340,000hct. The Oromia Regional State is the top producer of khat with 1.3 million quintals a year, followed by the South-Western and Sidama regional states' 650,000qtl a year each.

The growing demand encourages farmers to turn their faces to growing khat. Ten years ago, 1.7 million farmers were cultivating khat, which swelled to  4.1 million last year.

The plant continues to be one of Ethiopia’s primary cash crops, says Abdi Muktar, deputy head of the Dire Dawa Trade & Investment Bureau, who was also involved in the study.

Earnings from khat exports accounted for 11pc (402.5 million dollars) of the total 3.6 billion dollars generated last year, representing 24pc higher than khat export revenues recorded in the previous year. The stimulant is among the agricultural commodities that made up 70pc of export earnings, trailing behind coffee and cut flowers. Gold is the only non-agricultural commodity to register higher on the earnings list.