Global IssuesDR CONGO’: Fresh Start for DR Congo's Coffee Producers
Long years of civil war and instability set off a crippling decline in coffee production in the Democratic Republic of Congo: the country's output in 2010 was less than a tenth the harvest twenty years earlier. Now the DRC government has a strategy to bolster recovery of the sector.
In the eastern province of South Kivu, coffee cultivation is being encouraged in all eight districts. Dozens of nurseries have been set up, carefully tended by local farmers.
'In June and July 2011, we handed over 414 kilogrammes of arabica coffee seeds to these eight territories to cultivate. The seeds were bought from the National Seed Service at a cost of 1,656 dollars,' says Nkamizama Bola, the sector chief for the National Coffee Bureau (known by its French acronym, ONC) in Bukavu, the provincial capital of South Kivu.
From January to June 2011, Bola says, the ONC produced over 250,000 seedlings, distributing more than 170,000 to a hundred planters working on 580 hectares across the province.
In Orientale province, also in the east of the DRC, the actors involved are growing the robusta variety of coffee, IPS found. All is being done with the collaboration of the Provincial Steering Committee, a technical body created by the Ministry of Agriculture to follow up on the revival of coffee growing in the selected provinces.
'Nearly 700 hectares must be used for growing arabica coffee in Bandundu province (in the south-west of DRC). We have been training growers since June. We have already done a lot to popularise new growing techniques,' explains Marc Tunieka, engineer and president of the committee in Bandundu.
'The cost of the recovery plan for Congo's coffee sector is on the order of 100 million dollars. About 50 percent is coming from the government, allocated in the 2012 budget,' says Thomas Kembola, president of the National Committee for Monitoring of the Coffee Sector at the agriculture ministry.
Jean Cyrile Bozeme, national head of the ONC, confirmed this, indicating that the rest will be raised from the ONC and the Common Fund for Commodities, among others.
The Strategy Document for the Recovery of the Coffee Sector 2011-2015 stresses that by 2015 the country wants to achieve a production level of 120,000 tonnes of coffee.
The document outlines the government's plans to reinforce activities all along the value chain, including research, production, processing and marketing, as well as local processing and consumption.
According to experts, Congo's export volume fell from around 119,320 tonnes of coffee in 1989 to just 897 tonnes in 2009, and less than 6,000 tonnes in 2010, due to numerous factors such as the civil wars of 1997 and 1998.
But armed conflict is only part of the picture: the upkeep of coffee plantations and processing facilities has been neglected or abandoned, the big buyers have disappeared…
'Our greatest fear is linked to climate change,' worries Joseph Katenga, an expert in coffee cultivation. 'Drought could have a negative impact on production despite new methods that have been introduced.' He recommends that the government makes improved, high-yielding varieties available in all six coffee-producing provinces.
© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service