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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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The impact of Ethiopian Federalism on the coffee value chain
| Panel |
26. Decentralising power and natural resource control: responses and perspectives
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| Paper ID | 97 |
| Author(s) |
Love, Roy
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | In 1991, on removal of the military regime, the incoming Ethiopian government introduced a federal system of government, which devolved a number of fiscal and governance powers to the major regions. Historically, a high level of centralisation of state powers was paralleled in the structure and regulation of the coffee market as this major cash crop moved from regions of production to export. A gradual liberalisation of the market (in part due to donor pressure) embedded in a more decentralised fiscal and administrative environment would be expected to have altered the pattern of value added at different stages in the national coffee chain. This paper will examine the degree to which this has favoured small producers, local merchants and haulage companies or whether it has created predatory opportunities for centrally based brokers and exporters on the one hand and for local/regional tax and licence authorities on the other. It will pay particular attention to the growth of producer cooperatives as a means of attempting to capture the potential gains, and of the comparative merits of courting the ‘fair trade’ and ‘organic’ markets in the consuming countries. The picture is complicated by the presence of a large domestic market for coffee and by scope in many areas for the production of an alternative crop, chat, particularly when coffee prices fall, and which has a less institutionalised market. |
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