General Context

Café Africa Tanzania’s main aim is to improve farmers’ livelihoods in Tanzania through increased coffee productivity and quality in line with the National Coffee Strategy.  Café Africa Tanzania supports national and zonal platforms working on critical industry topics and coordination of work on issues integrated into national institutions, to achieve an improved coffee production system. We have a particular focus on rekindling interest in the coffee sector among young people for whom it provides opportunities for jobs and livelihoods.

Our Approach

Collecting of Information and organization of the stake holders’ meetings as the basis for participatory diagnosis or situation analysis of the existing state of the industry in each country.

Supporting a multi-stakeholder process to bring all actors in the value chain from the farmer to the exporters to develop a common strategy and detailed implementation plan for rejuvenating the national coffee sector.

Delivering technical support to those multi stakeholder initiatives to implement their national coffee strategies.

Opportunities in the Tanzanian Coffee Sector

The sector is characterized by a vibrant coffee stakeholder platform, with zonal and centralized opportunities for interactions between various players and with relevant Government agencies (e.g., Zonal Stakeholder Meetings, the Tanzania Coffee Association, the National Coffee Conference, the National Sustainable Coffee Committee).

The Government is concerned for developing the sector, has prioritized the crop, and developed ambitious programs, strategies, and policies to demonstrate this. Most recently, coffee producing districts were mandated to promote and supervise seedling production and distribution to existing and new coffee farmers to increase productivity.

A slow and steady increase in world consumption of coffee that provides a continued and growing market for Tanzanian coffee. At the same time, there is a genuine interest in Tanzanian coffee, particularly in some specialized markets such as Japan.

The sector has access to a range of actors along the entire coffee value chain (albeit in insufficient numbers), from coffee agronomy specialists, input suppliers, primary and secondary processing facilities, traders and exporters.

Challenges in the Tanzanian Coffee Sector

To gain a better insight into the volatility of the market, and with the noble intentions of regulating prices for the benefit of producers, the government of Tanzania has frequently changed policy and regulations affecting all areas of coffee production. This has been detrimental to farmers, traders, buyers, and service providers whose mistrust in the sector over the past two decades has discouraged them from making long-term investments in the sector. At the same time, producer organizations have been set back as they attempt to comply with the new requirements with limited capacity and resources.

The private sector has been over-regulated, largely due to the government’s belief that it is exploiting producers and not equitably sharing the financial gains made from the export of coffee. Meanwhile, Government has not been able to close the gap in services provided by the private sector to producers, such as agronomy and quality extension, agro-inputs, pre-harvest loans and similar.

Coffee continues to be a highly politicized crop, with a long history of manipulation and support of producer groups and entities of political interests. This has often seen over-subsidization and disregard for financial and administrative integrity, with no obvious benefits to producers.

The government has not been helpful in resolving some long-standing land disputes in some traditional coffee producing areas, leaving former coffee estates unproductive and unused, thus missing out on the potential to increase production on available land.

These shortcomings have resulted in a stuttering of the sector’s potential to grow, and discouraged investments being made by existing producers, particularly the smallholders producing the bulk of the country’s coffee.

Through our work at Café Africa Tanzania, we are committed to contribute to achieve the following  UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the framework of the Agenda 2030