Coffee marketing presents challenges as there is so much competition, despite heavy demand. This is especially true for coffee entrepreneurs and marketers in Africa. It’s a premium product fetching a high price in international markets while the farmers who produce it see only a small portion of the high economic value and prestige of coffee. Most of the prestigious brands associated with premium coffee, with a few exceptions, are not African at all.
Instead, they are typically based in Western countries, with Africa being used as a source of the raw or green coffee beans. Many are trying to change this. This includes NGOs such as Fairtrade. However, there is a growing number of private initiatives that focus on ensuring that African farmers get the support they need and full value for the high-quality coffee they produce.
In this article, we look at the state of the coffee industry in Africa and how African traders and entrepreneurs can market coffee to take advantage of the high demand for specialty coffee in Africa and the sustainability concerns that come with it.
African Coffee History
Africa has the honor of being the birthplace of Coffea arabica (or Arabica coffee), the coffee variety that has come to define high-quality specialty coffee. However, Africa, until recently, has hardly benefitted from the popular brew. This is even reflected in the name — Coffea arabica — which is named after a region outside of Africa. So someone else gets the prestige for a premium product invented in Africa. It does not just stop there. From an economic perspective, African economies and African farmers do not benefit the most from this commodity.
The history of coffee begins in Africa, in particular, the highlands of Ethiopia. No one knows for sure when coffee cultivation began. We know for certain that the wild coffee varieties originated in Ethiopia and that coffee cultivation was popularized and commercialized in Yemen by the fifteenth century. From Yemen, coffee was spread through trade to the rest of the world. Despite the global popularity of coffee, the Arabs kept the cultivation of coffee a well-guarded trade secret.
Despite the cloudy history associated with the origin of coffee drinking and domestication, modern Ethiopia, which originated the famed Arabica coffee continues a lively traditional coffee ceremony. It involves welcoming and celebrating guests while praying and socializing in the pungent aroma of both freshly roasted and brewed coffee as well as incense. You can check out this fascinating ceremony in the video below:
While Ethiopians would have picked their coffee beans fresh from coffee trees, the rest of the world besides Yemen had to settle for coffee beans that could not germinate. The Yemen traders made sure to boil all the beans that were exported so no one outside Ethiopia or Yemen could cultivate coffee. As far back as the sixteenth century, Yemenis seemed to appreciate the value of copyright and patent protection. However, things changed when the Indian monk Baba Budan reportedly smuggled ‘seven seeds’ out of Yemen around 1600 CE to establish Indian Arabica cultivars and eventually the worldwide spread of coffee cultivation.
European explorers and traders eventually carried coffee cultivars from their Southeast Asian colonies and established coffee plantations throughout their colonies in America. The massive appetite for coffee in the United States and Europe ensured that Latin America became the major commercial producer of coffee up to this day.
The Modern Coffee Industry In Africa
The Mutombo Coffee brand was established in the context of an African coffee industry that shows promise but struggles with several issues. Mutombo Coffee focuses in particular on helping female coffee farmers in the DRC, a country that reflects the precarious nature of the coffee industry in Africa. At its height, coffee production in the DRC was over 121,000 metric tons in 1989. However, due to political instability and disease, it has declined to less than 10,000 metric tons. The problems facing the African coffee industry include:
—A lack of investment
—Undeveloped supply chains
—Low international market prices
—Coffee diseases
—Minimal added value
—Lack of marketing
Dikembe Mutombo, the NBA basketball legend who helped establish the Mutombo Coffee brand. Source: Mutombo Coffee website.
Since the post-World War II period, the coffee industry has been dominated by commodity coffee. This describes coffee grown in large plantations in countries like Brazil and Indonesia. In the 1980s, the rise of specialty coffee led to an increase in the demand for high-quality Coffee arabica, which was commercially grown at first in a few select Latin American countries such as Guatemala, Colombia, and Costa Rica.
Latin America and countries like Indonesia have dominated the global production of coffee. However, Africa is becoming increasingly important as a producer. One of the factors driving the popularity of African coffee is the fact that it is the center of coffee diversity. The Ethiopian highlands are the home and origin of coffee. This means that it has the most impressive array of coffee varieties. Specialty coffee growers see it as the land of opportunity to develop tasty and original quality varieties. A perfect example of this would be the Panamian Geisha coffee variety — the most expensive premium specialty coffee — which was developed in Panama but originated in Ethiopia.
Also, there has been an increasing emphasis on sustainability and fair pricing for farmers in the coffee industry. This has provided opportunities for small family farms in Africa to garner more benefits from the specialty coffee industry. The nature of the specialty coffee industry means that small producers in Africa can attain higher prices while engaging in sustainable farming practices that preserve the environment.
A Promising Industry With Challenges
The main producers of coffee remain Latin American and Southeast Asian countries. However, Africa is rapidly gaining ground. Currently, the continent accounts for 12% of the world's production of coffee and amounts to a value of about $3.5 billion. The table below shows the different African countries and the annual quantity of coffee they produce. Major producers in Africa include Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, the DRC, Burundi, and so on.
In recent times, however, coffee production in Africa has decreased, and there have been calls for African farmers to add more value to the coffee that is shipped abroad. Most of the coffee exported in Africa is exported in the form of green beans. African producers could gain higher prices for their products by processing it more such as roasting their own coffee beans on a commercial scale or turning them into coffee bi-products such as powdered coffee or instant coffee.
Much of the coffee grown in Africa is the Coffea arabica variety, which is highly prized for its high quality among coffee connoisseurs. However, Robusta coffee (or Coffea canephora) is indigenous to countries like Uganda and grown in large amounts in Vietnam. This variety of coffee is not quite as popular among coffee experts. However, from an agricultural perspective, it might be more popular among farmers. This is because, as the name suggests, it is more robust to climatic fluctuations and disease than Arabica coffee.
The specialty coffee industry in Africa is primed for growth and success due to two factors: ideal coffee-growing conditions such as in Kenya and Ethiopia, where the climate and elevation are ideal for growing premium quality coffee. Another factor I mentioned earlier is the fact that Ethiopia is home to the highest diversity of coffee. Ethiopia has become a kind of frontier for discovering wild coffee varieties that can serve as the inspiration for novel strains of coffee, which may, in turn, become hits or famous in the elite world of gourmet coffee.
A good example of this is Panama geisha coffee. This is a coffee strain that was discovered in the Gori Gesha Forest in the 1930s. The coffee gained fame in 2005 when the Peterson family of Boquete, Panama, featured it in the “Best of Panama” competition and auction, where it garnered both high marks and prices. Malawi — a small African country — is also famous for producing Gesha varieties of coffee. So, Africa’s legacy of providing the world with coffee varieties that may go on to greatness continues.
Mutombo coffee: An example of coffee marketing in Africa
The Mutombo coffee brand was an initiative started by the NBA basketball legend Dikembe Mutombo, whom the brand is named after, and Robert (Bob) C. Bush Jr., an American businessman based in New York. Unfortunately Mr. Mutombo passed away, but the brand lives on. Its inspiration is not just reviving production, but making sure that coffee-growing communities in Africa benefit from this highly prized crop.
It places a particular focus one women, who typically bear the brunt of the grunt work in African coffee farming. Plus, there is a sense of unfairness that underlies the coffee industry both in Africa and other third-world countries.
Just consider the discrepancy between the low price that hardworking farmers receive for toiling away handpicking coffee beans and the price that suppliers and middlemen receive for selling the final cup of coffee. NGOs like Fairtrade try to help by ensuring that farmers can obtain a fair price for their coffee beans. However, private coffee enterprises like Mutombo Coffee are forging new and innovative business models that support African farming communities while being sustainable and serving the demands of the market.
Mutombo Coffee is a brand that represents the blending of quality, sustainability, and ethical business. Robert Bush who is the founder of the brand has emphasized the importance of investing in coffee supply chains in Africa to make African coffee more productive and to ensure that farmers benefit more from the commodity. The coffee has a selection of beans from the DRC, Kenya, Ethiopia, and several other African countries.
Coffee marketing strategies
Marketing coffee should be a three-pronged approach. There are three aspects to marketing coffee. They include 1. Branding, 2. SEO-based Content marketing, and 3. Social Media-based Content Marketing or social selling. We will explain each of these below.
1. Branding
Coffee is so popular that the only way to stand out is with proper brand marketing. In 2024, the market was valued at US$ 132.1 billion, and by 2029, that value is expected to reach US$166.4 billion. This means a large consumer base. It also means that there are thousands of online and physical coffee sellers competing with each other.
Branding offers one way to stand out from the crowd. Brand messaging may be related to 1. High quality, 2. Sustainability, and 3. Community support. You can choose either one or all three of these pillars to market your coffee.
With high quality, the emphasis is on the premium quality and grade of your coffee. This means single-origin coffee that can be traced back to a particular country, farm, or even lot on a farm. It also means flowery or fruity flavors associated with light roasts as opposed to the bitter flavors associated with dark-roasted coffee. This is ideal for coffee marketing in Africa as Africa is well-known for a number of premium quality beans, especially in countries like Ethiopia and Kenya.
Sustainability and community support branding emphasize environmental protection and paying fair wages to farmers, respectively. Coffee production and marketing in Africa and other third-world countries have long been associated with low wages and poor treatment of workers. A brand messaging approach that emphasizes guarantees to support workers' rights and environmental sustainability will attract and keep the growing base of customers with an interest in these topics.
The advantage of this strategy is that you get away with charging high or premium prices, without worrying about low-priced competition. However, with the increase in the popularity of specialty coffee, the competition between premium brands is higher than ever. Also, before brand marketing can work, you have to get your name out there, which is a challenge. How do customers land on the product pages of your website if they don't know the name of your brand?
2. SEO-based content marketing
SEO-based content marketing simply means creating content to match what customers are searching for in relation to coffee. It has several advantages over branding. Branding represents an advanced stage of marketing. For it to work, you need a brand that is well-known and that has an aggressive and dynamic marketing strategy and brand storytelling techniques.
SEO-based content marketing is much easier than that. You simply have to carry out the appropriate keyword research to determine what the broad base of coffee consumers are searching for on Google. Then, you write articles or product pages that answer these questions and satisfy their needs.
Of course, the target market and goals differ widely from brand messaging. You are going, not after a small differentiated market familiar with your brand, but instead, you appeal to a much broader audience, that is, anyone who is interested in coffee and who have particular questions about it. There is a major advantage in this approach.
The demand for coffee is large. So, we're looking at a much bigger audience than brand marketing. Specialty coffee might be a premium or gourmet product. But most customers, even if they are interested in specialty coffee, don't know how it works.
They won't know the intricacies in taste between dark roasts and light roasts or the difference between bitter flavors and more fruity flavors. They might not even know what flat white is even if they just ordered it yesterday. But, they are interested in knowing.
This provides you with the opportunity to create a blog that answers these questions and educates your customers or potential customers. These customers will eventually end up in your sales funnel and get converted into sales.
3. Social media-based coffee marketing
Social media is ideal for coffee marketing. The hip cafe is the perfect backdrop for cool pics posted on Instagram, videos on TikTok, and videos on YouTube. Making and drinking coffee is highly visual. This makes it perfect for content.
And I mean from the coffee farm to the final cup of coffee. Content would include farmers picking beautiful red cherry beans. Roasters roasting coffee showing it turn from white to brown. Baristas making the perfect cup of coffee with the creamy foam to top it off. A coffee shop, farm, or cafe produces enough images every day to keep your social media active for months at a time. Social media outlets for coffee content marketing include:
Instagram
YouTube
TikTok
LinkedIn
You can have a personal or company account on Instagram or Twitter, or tikTok to post your content and impress followers with your pics or grow followers with your pics. In the case of YouTube, your channel can have the double advantage of generating YouTube ad revenues and providing your followers with content to binge.
However, another advantage is user-generated content. Buyers who are impressed with your cafe or coffee that they purchased from your online coffee shop will be providing your business with free publicity or advertising. This is a perfect social selling strategy.
While brand marketing is great, coffee brands in Africa may not have the advertising budgets to undertake it. SEO-content marketing and social media marketing provide you with the opportunity to promote your product without having access to massive budgets. All you need is a website, a blog, and a TikTok account.
Cite this EminentEdit article |
Antoine, M. (2024, November 02). Coffee Marketing: The Case of Africa. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/coffee-marketing-the-case-of-africa |
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