Ethiopia and Luxembourg have agreed to strengthen cooperation on both bilateral and multilateral venues.
This agreement was made during a meeting between Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr Workneh Gebeyehu and the Foreign Minister of Luxembourg, Jean Assselborn, yesterday.
Both parties highlighted the importance of enhancing bilateral relations and other multilateral issues including migration and refugee management.
“In such score, Minister Workneh took note of Ethiopia’s refugee law, which he described as one of the most progressive refugee policies in Africa and beyond. Dr Workneh also acknowledged Luxemburg’s support for the EU-Africa Strategic Partnership,
Minister Assselborn expressed his country’s keenness to further boost relations with Ethiopia.
On his four-day visit to Ethiopia, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi praised the country’s generosity towards hosting refugees, as well as the government’s openness to new and innovative approaches to improve the lives of the more than 900,000 refugees and the communities hosting them.
The High Commissioner spent two days in Melkadida, a region bordering Somalia, which hosts over 200,000 refugees.
He also visited markets supported by microfinance and other economic empowerment programmes, where refugees and the local community buy and sell their crops. The programme has been so successful that some of the crops are being exported to other regions in the country. Refugees told the High Commissioner that they are saving some of their income to improve the markets themselves.
“The host community are welcoming us, and we are welcoming them.”
“What has developed here is a unique approach to self-reliance of refugees where the government of Ethiopia has been extremely open to new approaches,” said Grandi. “The host communities and refugees have also been remarkably open to working together in harmony. This is something we don’t normally see.”
At a meeting with community leaders in Dollo Ado, the High Commissioner and IKEA Foundation CEO Per Heggenes heard about how the investment has had a positive impact on the entire community. They also announced that the Foundation has decided to extend their investment in the project for at least three more years to ensure the community can sustain it independently.
Heggenes, who noted that the area was in a dire situation when the project began, calls the progress he has witnessed “a dream come true.” He said its legacy is as much about helping foster harmony between the refugees and the local Ethiopians, as it is about growing the economy.
“What always happens when large numbers of refugees descend on a small community is it creates conflicts, because everyone wants to have the firewood, everyone wants to have the grazing land for their goats,” said Heggenes. “We approached this in a way to say we’re going to help the refugees and the host community come together, farm the land together, share the crops and live as sisters and brothers.”
At the Melkadida Camp, the High Commissioner visited another project that the IKEA Foundation invested in – a secondary school, where refugee and host community students have access to quality teachers, well-equipped classrooms and a supportive learning environment.
For those that graduate, there is an opportunity to attend a new teacher’s college in Melkadida, also thanks to IKEA Foundation funding, with the goal of giving young people the opportunity to become professionally qualified teachers and to help shape the next generation of students in the region.
One of those students, 19-year-old Fartun who is in her last year of secondary school and hopes to attend university to study medicine, told the High Commissioner and Heggeness that she hopes the rest of Ethiopia can learn from how education can be a crucial tool to bring peace and harmony between communities.
“I have refugee friends and friends from the host community,“ she says. “ We study together and it makes no difference. The host community are welcoming us, and we are welcoming them.”
“It is important that we share this solidarity.”
“I have been in the most remote villages of this continent where sharing the little food, water and shelter that people have with foreigners that are in distress because they had to flee, is not like in other richer parts of the world. It’s not the subject of political negotiations but is a natural instinct rooted in the absolute values of a tradition of a culture and of a society,” Grandi said in an interview.
“This solidarity is there. People have it naturally. But we should not take it for granted. It is important that we share this solidarity.”
Throughout his visit, the High Commissioner spoke about the importance of the Global Compact on Refugees, adopted by the UN General Assembly last December, which calls for more inclusion of refugees in communities where they reside and more global support for countries like Ethiopia, who continue to welcome and host them.
“This the first year we’re going to implement the Global Compact on Refugees,“ Grandi said. “But I tell people we’re already implementing it here in Melkadida, with multiple partners and development partners from programmes in irrigation, vocation, educational training.”
While in Addis, the High Commissioner also met with President Sahle-Work Zewde, as well as Ato Kebede, the Director General of the government’s refugee agency ARRA, where he praised Ethiopia’s new refugee law as forward-looking and representing the principles of the Global Compact on Refugees.
Addressing the media following his meeting with the President, Grandi said “the proclamation is one of the best refugee laws, not only in Africa, but in the world,” and pledged to mobilize more resources for development, “not just for refugees, but also for their hosts.”
The road connecting Ethiopia and Kenya has raised trade by 400 percent between the countries, according to the African Development Bank (AfDB).
In an exclusive interview with ENA, AfDB President Akinwumi A. Adesina said the bank is financing transport and energy infrastructures and building new agro-industrial parks to promote Ethiopia’s economy.
AfDB is delighted to have funded the road that links Ethiopia all the way to Mombasa, Kenya, he added.
“That road alone has allowed trade between Ethiopia and Kenya to rise by 400 percent, and has also provided Ethiopia with access to the port,” Adesina pointed out.
According to him, the bank is also financing Ethiopia’s hydropower generation, power transmission lines, and infrastructure linking Hawassa Industrial Park to Djibouti as well as the new agro-industrial parks to promote value addition.
The government of Ethiopia has been doing very well in investing in hydroelectric power, the president said, describing the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam as “a major accomplishment.”
Adesina expressed his amazement by saying, “I have never seen any other African country invest more in infrastructure than this country.”
“This is the country that has experienced economic growth rate over 10 percent for over a decade and even last year (it) had 7.7 percent GDP growth rate which is amusing against the context of the global growth rate of about 3 percent. This is a phenomenal performance that you have in Ethiopia,” the president stated.
“I will tell you one thing that never makes me nervous about Ethiopia. If you ever watch Olympics and you see people that run long distances without getting tired, they are Ethiopians; right? So I think Ethiopians always know how to face challenges, and I am sure that is one you will cope with as well.”
Obviously, given the history of Ethiopia, where the public sector does a lot of things, the president stated that “with the bold move of opening up the economy for the private sector, the economy will even grow faster with liberalization.”
Describing the private sector as a key potential to economic growth, Adesina noted that it is critical to unlocking the potential through creating a good environment as well as right business and investment regulatory bodies.
Furthermore, he pointed out that AfDB will invest in transforming Ethiopia’s rural economy into zones of economic prosperity.
“All in all, we are great partners with Ethiopia, but most importantly Ethiopians by themselves are doing great all by themselves. We can only help to support what they are doing,” President Adesina concluded.
This biweekly bulletin is prepared by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ethiopia in view of informing the public and the diplomatic community on investment, trade, technology transfer and tourism activities undertaken by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as the opportunities in those sectors.
This edition includes articles (on pages 4-5) about Ethiopia’s presence at the annual tourism expo of Luxembourg, known as LUXEXPO, and the colourful promotion of tourism in Ethiopia at the Brussels holiday fair “Salon des Vacances” from 7-10 February 2019.
The Ethiopian parliament passed on 4 February what is considered the strongest tobacco control legislation in Africa that will reduce tobacco use in the country.
The Food and Medicine Administration Proclamation, passed unanimously by the parliament, will save lives and protect over 105 million people in Africa’s second most populous nation, experts say.
The new law requires 100 per cent smoke-free public and workplaces, bans tobacco advertising and promotions, restricts the sale of flavoured tobacco products and mandates pictorial warning labels covering 70 per cent of the front and back of all tobacco products.
The law also bans the sale of heated tobacco products, e-cigarettes, and shisha, and prohibits tobacco sales to anyone under the age of 21.
Bintou Camara, Director of Africa Programs, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids explains the impact of Ethiopia’s new law.
“As tobacco companies continue to set their sights on Africa, Ethiopia has set an example for what all African nations can and should to do curb tobacco use, the world’s leading cause of preventable death,” Ms Camara said.
Every year, more than 16,800 Ethiopians are killed by tobacco-caused disease, according to the Tobacco Atlas. Still, more than 18,000 children (10-14 years old) and over two million adults (15 years and above) continue to use tobacco each day.
Ms Camara said tobacco companies fight hardest against the measures they know work to reduce tobacco use in Africa and around the world,
“The Ethiopian government must now move to implement the law as swiftly as possible and remain vigilant against attempts by tobacco companies to undermine this tremendous progress.”
Tobacco use kills more than seven million people every year around the world, according to the World Health Organisation.
More than six million of those deaths are the result of direct tobacco use while about 890,000 are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke.
Nearly 80 per cent of the world’s more than one billion smokers live in low- and middle-income countries, including in Africa.
A legal tussle over who owns teff, Ethiopia’s staple grain, has been settled.
Until just recently, an obscure Dutch agronomist held the patent for making pretty much anything out of teff flour, strangling Ethiopia’s ability to market and sell its millenia-old grain. The tale of how that happened — and how Ethiopia won back control of its staple crop — is an object lesson in how the worldwide practice of patenting agricultural products often harms those in the developing world.
A three-judge court in the Netherlands ruled a European patent for the products made of teff lacked “inventiveness,” ending a years-long controversy over who owned the ancient grain. The controversial patent, which was initially filed in 2003, listed Dutchman Jans Roosjen as the inventor of the teff flour that’s used to make injera flatbread and other traditional Ethiopian food. The Ethiopian embassy in the Netherlands confirmed the ruling, which was first filed in June 2014 and whose verdict was delivered in November last year.
“The reason for the late announcement is the time for appeal was still running,” the embassy wrote on its Twitter handle. “As no appeal was made, the verdict is now final: the claim to processing teff by patent holder is null and void in the Netherlands.”
Rich in protein, fibre, and minerals, teff has slowly been gaining a global foothold especially after the Ethiopian government lifted the ban on exports in 2015. It has also been marked as the next big superfood, as huge numbers of people in the West have moved away from low-fat and sugar-free diets and gravitated towards gluten-free.
Looking at it as a lucrative industry as such, teff products have been introduced in countries including Spain and the United States. Yet its patent by a Dutchman left many Ethiopians, who have cultivated and used it for millennia, confounded.
“It is an issue of our inability to own our national assets in the international legal system,” Fitsum Arega, the former commissioner of the Ethiopian Investment Commission, has said on Twitter of the patent. “We need to defend it.”
The furor over the teff ownership comes at a time when Africans are increasingly raising questions about creative and artistic theft, cultural appropriation, and pushing to reclaim their narrative.
While Ethiopia can once again market its teff in the Netherlands, Roosjen’s patents remain in force in Belgium, Germany, Britain, Austria and Italy. The Ethiopian attorney general’s office has since issued a statement that the ruling was critical to its own efforts to one day restore its “full ownership of teff.”
The Ethiopian government is celebrating a major victory in a long-running dispute over who owns the patent for products made from teff – an ancient grain that forms the basis of Ethiopia’s staple food, injera.
In 2003, a Dutch company registered a European patent for teff-related products, claiming that these were “invented” by a certain Jans Roosjen, a senior company official. In recent years, Ethiopia has complained that this is totally inaccurate — Ethiopians have been using teff for millennia, after all — and that the patent prevents Ethiopian companies from exploiting a growing global market for teff.
Teff is gluten-free and rich in nutrients and has been touted as the next major health food fad, following in the footsteps of quinoa and kale.
This November, a Dutch court ruled that the patent contained no ‘inventiveness’, and was therefore null and void. The news was announced by Fitsum Arega, until recently the chief of staff of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, on Twitter on Wednesday.
“I just learned that The Court of The Hague ruled against the Teff patent holder. This is great news,” he said. “I hope we can learn from this that our national assets must be protected by Ethiopians and friends of Ethiopia.”
The embassy of the Netherlands in Ethiopia confirmed the news. “This embassy confirms the November ruling. The reason for the late announcement is the time for appeal was still running. As no appeal was made, the verdict is now final: the claim to processing teff by patent holder is null and void in the Netherlands,” it said.
This would not be the first time that a western company has tried to patent or copyright an existing African product. One example: several French and American companies have tried to trademark ‘rooibos’, the herbal tea that has been grown in South Africa for generations. To prevent this from happening again, South Africa’s department of trade and industry successfully obtained ‘geographic indicator status’ for the product, meaning that only manufacturers in South Africa may use the name.
The Ethiopian government has vowed to enhance women’s participation in the military, police and the civilian services of the United Nations Peacekeeping.
Speaking at the opening of a two-day Preparatory Meeting on Women, Peace and Security with the Canada authorities and the United Nations (UN in Addis Ababa, Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde suggested that any peacekeeping mission should give priority for the protection of women and other vulnerable groups.
She further said that the collaboration of the African Union (AU) and the UN should focus on ensuring the active participation of women and women’s groups in peace processes, conflict prevention, resolution, and peacebuilding activity, and promotion of women’s human rights.
The State Minister of Defense, Ambassador Lela-Alem Gebreyohannes added that the country has deployed thousands of peacekeepers to the eight UN missions in which it had participated.
“This record reflects Ethiopia’s sustained commitment to supporting the idea that women truly make a difference in successful peacekeeping,” she said, adding that this was a clear testimony of an unwavering commitment to continue playing an active role in peacekeeping in the years and decades to come.
The Peace and Stabilization of Canada’s Global Affairs Director-General, Larisa Galadza, said Ethiopia is showing exceptional leadership at the United Nations.
“It is a leading troop contributor, and it is also the country that is deploying the highest number of women in uniform to peace operations,” said Galadza.
Currently, more than 7500 Ethiopian peacekeepers are serving under the UN Blue Helmets. The country is proud of being one of the leading contributors of female peacekeepers with more than 600 deployed under UN Peace Keeping Missions.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed officially inaugurated the 1.26 billion birr Gidabo Irrigational Dam, located between the Oromia and SNNP Regional States (Southern Ethiopia) on 3 February.
Speaking at the inauguration, Prime Minister Abiy stressed his government’s plan to focus on irrigation farming mobilizing local resources. Considering the government’s priority of agriculture & strengthening irrigation projects, he emphasizes that similar projects will bring together communities from different regions.
“It is a shame to beg wheat and engage ourselves in throwing stones to each other,” PM Abiy said, stressing the need to avoid wasting precious time and resources fighting because over political and ethnic differences.
“We need more of such irrigation dams to produce and feed wheat instead of fighting each other begging wheat,” he said. He also indicated that the country should focus on what it already has such as water, arable land, and labor, instead of trying to industrialize using external loan and aid.
The dam can create jobs for up to 20,000 skilled youth and generates income addition to 10, 850 households engaged in farming and agro-pastoralists, according to Engineer Sileshi Bekele, Ethiopia’s water and Energy Minister.
PM Abiy also stressed similar irrigation projects, which link the people of two different regions [Oromia and Southern region], should be replicated to strengthen bondage between the people in different regions such as between Amhara and Tigray.
The Gidabo water used to create a swamp area of 6,000 hectares before the irrigation dam was built, according to Engineer Abdulfeta Taju, Gidabo project head, who also indicated that the dam could also serve for fishing.
Launched nine years ago, Gidabo irrigation dam has cost the country over 1.14 billion birrs (around $41 million) mainly because of design revision, which increased the irrigation capacity from 7,000 hectares to 13,000 hectares. The investment includes installation of over 7 kilometers of concrete canal, according to Engineer Abdulfeta.
Avenue de Tervuren is known to be a busy street, thanks to its multiple embassies, regional representations, and NGOs. N°64 on this avenue is home to the Embassy of Ethiopia to the Kingdom of Belgium and to the European Union. Last week, n°64 was undoubtedly the busiest door on Avenue de Tervuren due to the visit of the Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
This was Abiy Ahmed’s first official visit to Brussels and to the European Union institutions. He met with Jean Claude Juncker, Donald Tusk and Federica Mogherini. The full package. On this occasion, Ethiopia and the European Union signed a 130 million euros cooperation agreement divided in three pillars: job creation (50 million euros), sustainable energy (35 million euros), and the establishment of agro-industrial parks in Ethiopia (45 million euros).
It was in this overloaded week that I met the new Ambassador of Ethiopia to the Kingdom of Belgium and to the European Union: Ambassador Grum Abay.
I was waiting, at the charming conference room of the Embassy, for the Ambassador, when suddenly, I heard a friendly voice saying “Buongiorno Antonio!” I did not want to disappoint him and immediately replied “Buongiorno Signor Ambasciatore!”.
“You know” he continued “I’ve served as a diplomat and as an ambassador in Rome for several years! I love your country!”
“Well thank you” I replied, “but I only have Italian origins…in fact, I’m Portuguese”.
“Even better! Now you really must visit Ethiopia because both Portugal and Italy are old countries in the relationship between Ethiopia and Europe”.
This is how my conversation with the Ambassador started.
Can you tell me an anecdote about the luso-ethiopian relationship?
Of course! There are many, but I’ll tell you this one. The Portuguese came in the 16th century to Ethiopia. Funny enough, they came and told us that they were there to Christianise us and we explained to them that we were already Christians before they became one. Ethiopia accepted Christianity in 330 AD. We were in fact the second country in the world to accept Christianity after Armenia.
Ambassador Abay, you were appointed Ambassador to the Kingdom of Belgium in 2018. You also are the representative of Ethiopia to the European Union, and also the other Benelux countries. It’s quite a challenging position.
I’ve been serving as a diplomat for 33 years now. Since the beginning of my career, I’ve been mostly dealing with European affairs. In fact, my first foreign position was here in Brussels back in 1992. At the time, I was working as a Counsellor in this same Embassy, so I’m not new to Brussels. Between my first time in Brussels and this new chapter, I was the Ambassador of Ethiopia to Italy and most recently to Russia. I was transferred directly from Moscow to Brussels, where I presented my credentials last September 25th. Obviously, most of the job here concerns the European institutions. On a bilateral basis, it’s Belgium and Luxembourg that we are covering. We used to cover the Netherlands but since we opened an Embassy there last April 2018, we longer cover it.
How do you describe the relationship between Belgium and Ethiopia?
We have a strong and old relationship with Belgium. In fact, our diplomatic relations started in 1906! You are the 5th country that opened an official diplomatic representation in our land. The order is Italy (1896), France (1898), United Kingdom (1899), 1900 (The United States) and 1906 (Belgium). So, as you can see, we have long history…way before the European project. During the Italian invasion, Belgians were the ones who helped establish the Ethiopian body guard unit, which was responsible for the security of the Imperial Palace.
Ambassador Grum presenting his credentials to King Philippe of Belgium
How do you describe diplomatically Belgium?
Belgium respects the sovereignty of other countries. I think Belgium is a soft power country. It doesn’t engage on issues that are not critical to its own interest, and that’s why you don’t hear that much about Belgium on some of the global crisis situations. But Belgium’s voice is heard through the EU.
But in Africa you hear about Belgium. What about Congo?
The problem about colonialism in Africa, for us Ethiopians, it really doesn’t figure. Therefore, I don’t have the authority to comment. Luckily, we have not suffered under colonialism.
I assume there were many attempts…
Yes, many. Starting with your fellow countrymen, the Portuguese, but none of them succeeded. That is why there is a very strong sense of patriotism in Ethiopia. We might argue or fight with each other time to time, but whenever there were attempts of external aggression, we always find a way to come together. When our African brothers and sisters tell us what they went through under colonialism, it is difficult to understand them because that was not our experience. I’m not saying that they didn’t suffer. I’m just saying that we haven’t gone through that experience. Nonetheless, we Ethiopians were at the forefront of the anti-colonial struggle in Africa. Coming back to the Belgian colonization, let’s not forget that Congo was the property of King Leopold and not really Belgium, as a State. I think other European States have more responsibility. What about the British, French and Portuguese? They had almost the entire continent.
Do you think colonialism in Africa is over?
Yes, I feel that the story of colonialism in Africa is long over. Many in Africa still talk about colonialism as the cause of their lack of development. I categorically disagree with that because as far as I’m concerned, 70 years already passed. You cannot always go back to the past and blame colonialism for your own shortfalls. Frankly speaking: always blaming colonialism for the lack of good governance, for the lack of economic development, for the lack of political stability, for the lack of security is not intellectually honest. You have been independent for the last 70 years, that it is a long time to do things right.
Map of colonial Africa just before World War I
You are sending the message that Ethiopia doesn’t behave like its continental neighbours.
I would put like this: we are very proud of our history and that gives us a psychological predisposition in feeling that we are equal to anybody. We don’t have any inferiority complex. We don’t feel that the Europeans or Americans – because they are rich, white, blue or yellow – are superior to the Ethiopians. Our job consists in trying our best to develop our country without using any past, external or psychological excuses.
I understand the European Union is your main developing partner. What’s your strategy?
We feel that the economic development of Ethiopia is much linked with Europe and whatever assistance we get from the European Institutions, Ethiopia is renowned for implementing projects partly or fully financed by the Europeans. You don’t find in Ethiopia any European budget being stolen or put to use for other purposes.
Can you share an example of a successful project?
Well, for instance our national road development program. The amount allocated from the European institutions was exclusively used for this project. You know, everything is monitored. We have a very strict mechanism. The money is released on tranches so our partners can check the implementation of the project.
How much has the European Union allocated so far to Ethiopia?
About 745 million Euros from 2014 to 2020. Ending in fact this year in 2019.
How do you describe your economy in 2019?
Multiple international experts are being testimony to the incredible growth of the Ethiopian economy. We have been growing by 10% on average for 12 years. We are among the top 5 countries with the most impressive economic growth in the world. In Africa, we are number 1. Our economy is based on agriculture. Our challenge is to modernise Ethiopia’s agriculture in order to be more efficient and productive. Lately, we have focused our attention on the manufacturing sector by building industrial parks where we can attract foreign investors to create job opportunities for our youth. This is an important concern for us: to create jobs for our future generation. Our government believes that job creation will flourish in the manufacturing sector with input from an efficient, productive and technically-advanced agriculture.
And what about coffee? What is the weight of this sector on your economy?
Agriculture as a whole used to represent nearly half of our GDP and nowadays is around a third. Nevertheless, coffee still remains as the main export item from Ethiopia. Coffee exports are 40% of exported items, which represents about 10 % of our GDP.
40%?! Almost half of the economy?
Yes, 40%. Well, it used to more than 60%.
Most of coffee producers in Ethiopia are local farmers. How do they deal with the multinationals?
The farmers do not sell directly to the multinationals. There are two ways of selling coffee from Ethiopia. The first one, the farmer will sell the product to Ethiopian national companies that are exporting coffee. We have several of them by the way. Those Ethiopian coffee exporting companies are registered into the Ethiopian commodities exchange and through that they have market links with multinational companies who buy coffee. The second one is the farmer sells the product to Ethiopian coffee distributors.
Who are the main clients?
Starbucks for example. But the Starbuck coffee you drink in America is not really pure Ethiopian coffee.
What do you mean?
They buy Ethiopian coffee – aroma and taste – but they mix it with the robusta they buy Nicaragua, Honduras or Brazil. So in the end it’s doesn’t give you the real Ethiopian coffee taste.
But who are the big importers?
The Japanese, Germans, Saudis, and the Americans.
Could you share the coffee ranking worldwide?
First of all, I want to clarify that there are two types of coffee: robusta and arabica. Robusta type of coffee is cultivated widely in the world. Most of the countries who are coffee exporters produce robusta coffee. Namely, the Latin American countries and some countries in Africa. Arabica coffee is produced in very low amount, but it’s the best coffee. And that is the real Ethiopian coffee. You can also find it in Ivory Coast, or in Uganda. The rankings don’t reflect the difference in quality between robusta and arabica. But to reply to your question, Brazil is leading the ranking and we are number 7 worldwide.
A Coffea arabica tree on Lake Tana in Bahir Dar
I asked you this question because one can be surprised to see countries like Germany, Italy or Portugal as main coffee producers worldwide when they exclusively import coffee. As the Ambassador of Ethiopia to the European Union how do you analyse this situation?
That’s why when I told you we want to create jobs for our youth, it’s also about creating added value. We are actually doing good in that process of adding value to Ethiopian goods that are being exported. We have been engaging with foreign companies, including Italian companies, to cooperate with Ethiopian exporters in value-adding processes inside Ethiopia. The results are still very low, frankly speaking, because the companies in Italy, Portugal or Germany who buy the coffee, process it, package it, have their market networks already in place and get more money for Ethiopian coffee than any Ethiopian farmer. That is one of the reasons we are disappointed with European multinationals in this sector. We are demanding more money for our farmers. Starbucks buys a kilo of Ethiopian coffee for 6 dollars and they sell it for more than 17 dollars. This is unacceptable.
I’m curious to know how did you defend Ethiopian coffee in Italy. For us, Italy is home of quality expresso.
Well, let me tell you a story. One time I was in Luigi’s café, just a few meters from the Ethiopian Embassy in Rome, and I heard an Italian guy asking Luigi “fammi un bel caffè italiano!” – make me a good Italian coffee – and then I just laughed. This guy looked at me and asked me “why are you laughing”? I replied saying that this was the first time I heard about Italian coffee. And he says “yes, we have good Italian coffee” and I replied, “you don’t even have one coffee tree here!” And once again, we come back to the main issue: to add value. We are trying to add value to our coffee production and we have started to move in that direction; value-addition to our primary products. We will soon start to sell the whole package from the farms to the shops.
