Ghanaian farmers wake up and smell the coffee
A dip in prices led to fewer farms of the crop in the 1980s
Like many people around the world, 80-year-old Kofi Afadi can’t start his morning without a cup of coffee.
“Every morning when I take coffee I feel happy and go about my day,” the farmer said in his village in the green hills between Lake Volta in Ghana and the border with Togo.
“When there is no coffee it seems I am the most miserable person around here,” he said.
In common with many of his fellow coffee farmers, Afadi, whose dark hair and moustache are speckled white, also grows cocoa — Ghana’s biggest crop. The country is the second-largest cocoa exporter in the world behind neighbouring Ivory Coast.
Production of coffee, which was introduced to Ghana at the same time in the 18th century, trails in comparison.
But it has rebounded in recent years, thanks to a growing overseas demand and a blossoming domestic market that is giving farmers hope of growing a major cash crop.
Cafe culture
A collapse in the price of coffee in the 1980s caused many Ghanaian farmers to abandon the crop, according to Michael Owusu-Manu, a researcher at Ghana’s Cocoa Board.
But a government scheme launched in 2011 to revive the sector has transformed the Ghanaian coffee market.
It led to 2,400 hectares of new and revitalised coffee plantations, with farmers attracted by the introduction fair prices for the crop.
Owusu-Manu said the impact of the scheme is easy to overlook because much of Ghana’s of coffee is sold in West Africa and does not appear in official export statistics.
The beans that stay in Ghana are sold to local roasters, who must compete in a market where most coffee is imported.
Owusu-Manu now wants to connect local cafes popping up in Accra with local sellers.
Afadi hopes government support and a planned coffee farmers’ association will help them to wean locals off imports and establish Ghanaian beans in the home market.
Rising global demand
Ghanaian coffee is a matter of heritage for the country’s farmers. Afadi’s coffee farm in Leklebi Fiape, some 200 kilometres northeast of the coastal capital, Accra, is on the same plot where his father grew coffee in the 1920s.
The International Coffee Organisation reports that global annual coffee consumption has grown an average of 1.3 per cent every year since 2012.