South Korea, China to invest in building $50mln-worth-coffee park in Ethiopia

A coffee park is going to be raised in Ethiopia with the application of triangular-effort from the governments of South Korea, China and Ethiopia. The creation of coffee park will promote the east African country’s specialty coffee products to the international community.

The planned coffee park is said to attract an investment of USD 50 million. Sprawling across an area of 30 hectares in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, the imminent coffee park is likely to play a vital role in enhancing and representing the country’s unique coffee to the global community that will severely boost the export.

According to the Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority (ECTA), the new initiative christened “Ethiopian Coffee” is intended to spur the acceptance of the east African country’s coffee in the global market. The authority also said that the government’s initiative would boost the current “weak international presence and image” of Ethiopia’s major coffee varieties, such as Yirgacheffe, Harrar, and Sidamo coffee.

However, the new coffee park is expected to be completed in three years. Apart from the idea of boosting the “Ethiopian Coffee” in the international community, the government of Ethiopia wants to introduce a special product among coffee enthusiasts living in China.

This new initiative is part of Ethiopia’s ambition that envisaged to uplift the current close to 600,000 tons of annual coffee production to as far as 1.8 million tons within the coming 5 years period. According to the ECTA, at the heart of this huge production boost is the growing demand for Ethiopia's unique coffee beans in China, as reported by Xinhua.

“Presently, middle eastern countries are the prime export destinations for our coffee market. As the interest from China for coffee in general and Ethiopian produced coffee, in particular, increased over the past few years, we are also looking for opportunities on how to better penetrate the market there in China,” Yohanes Addis, Sales and Marketing Manager of Alfoz Plc.

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