Since December 2013, civil war has again been devastating parts of South Sudan, displacing more than 2 million people in a population where 80% are subsistence farmers. But farmers in the south-west Yei region, which is largely unaffected by the fighting, are seeing potential in a crop that could become one of the country’s largest exports and help lift them out of poverty. They are, quite literally, smelling the coffee.
Production in the area where South Sudan is located today started on a small scale at the end of the 19th century, until western aid helped coffee growers create a 20th-century export industry. Local farmer Isaya Lokolong Latiyo, from a village called KweKwete, remembers learning from his father how to grow coffee on the family’s plot in the 1970s. At that point, the UK government backed a large-scale project supporting coffee-tree planting.
Even though Isaya’s family had to transport the coffee all the way to Juba – selling it at a low price and spending much of their profits on transport and informal taxes – it still provided vital extra income. But then came the civil war: some 40 years of conflict destroyed the industry, cutting off the region from its export markets.
South Sudan’s independence, in 2011, finally produced a period of relative peace, and coffee farming for export began for the first time from this newly formed country through Suluja ti South Sudan, a rare and unique coffee launched by Nespresso at the end of 2015.
Isaya is one of an initial 500 farmers now benefiting from close cooperation between Nespresso and TechnoServe, a non-government organisation working across 30 countries to provide training and support to poor communities to help them build sustainable businesses. The farmers have been helped to form three co-operatives, the first of their type in the country.
Within the framework of the Nespresso AAA Sustainable Quality™ Program, they have also received support from the company to build South Sudan’s first wet mills, which turn coffee cherries into parchment coffee, an essential part of coffee processing that ensures a high-quality end product.
Farmers had previously removed the beans or seeds themselves and then used a stone and mortar, a process that produced inferior coffee and, therefore, yielded much lower prices.
Through Nespresso’s coffee revival project with TechnoServe, the hope is that South Sudanese farmers will be able to follow the successes of their counterparts in other countries. In Rwanda, for instance, TechnoServe has helped farmers resurrect coffee production after a savage civil war. Premium coffee has now become Rwanda’s main export, accounting for 60% of its foreign exchange earnings.
Isaya earns all his income from farming, with coffee sales producing enough cash to put his six children through school. He also farms other crops in order to feed his family, including maize, rice, beans, sesame and cassava. Of his 2.5 hectares of land, one hectare is dedicated to coffee.
Nespresso hopes Isaya’s approach will eventually be repeated by several thousand farmers in the region.
Working the land
According to TechnoServe’s David Browning, senior vice-president, strategic initiatives, the average subsistence farmer in Yei has 2-5 hectares of land but only farms half of it, as they can’t afford to pay for labour.
“An average farmer earns roughly US$100 annually, and school fees for his or her children alone can amount to more than that,” he says. “But with this initiative it’s possible for a farmer to eventually increase that annual income by even 500%. Currently, the yield is 1 kilo of coffee cherries per tree. We’re quite confident we can at the least triple that.”
Browning says that reintroducing coffee production is an important way of diversifying crops for farmers, who (besides staple food crops) need a cash crop to pay for day-to-day expenses such as school fees and uniforms, medical expenses and gas for cooking. The cash also pays for workers to cultivate fallow land – and grow more coffee and other crops.
Nespresso and TechnoServe take a grass-roots approach, says Browning. “We go into communities and listen to the aspirations of the farmers, what their needs and goals are. They say: ‘My grandfather and father farmed coffee but were never taught how. I want to learn!’”
One farmer said he’d get his children educated immediately if the programme succeeded. “He took an advert out of his wallet that had been folded and unfolded many times. It showed one of the finest boarding schools in Uganda. It’s indicative of the extraordinary optimism of our clients. Once they make a profit, it’s remarkable what they can achieve.”
The start of something good
It’s early days but entrepreneurial fervour is everywhere and the coffee revival programme is already having a knock-on effect, says Browning. Farmers are constantly thinking about the first business they can start with their coffee profits. “We’ve seen them investing in businesses like hulling machines to hull maize for neighbours and building kilns to create a brick-making business. A young man who owned a bicycle but no land was able to start transporting coffee cherries to the new wet mill – suddenly he had his own livelihood.”
Prior to the coffee mill, farmers built their own houses, fetching clay from the river to make bricks and thatching the roof, says Browning. “Now you buy your home, buy the bricks and hire thatchers – we have seen home construction becoming one of the drivers of the economy in many coffee communities.”
Isaya is diversifying too. Profits from a bumper coffee harvest in 2014 have been ploughed into a brick-making scheme to produce 15,000 bricks, many of which will be used to build a small farm warehouse. The remainder he will sell for income. The future looks encouraging.
