The African Fine Coffee Association Association (AFCA) has partnered with B-Open Nordic in Sweden to arrange two special events for next year to promote East African coffee to buyers in Scandinavia but also at the same time introduce the new innovative online market place and business model developed by Bean Auction Limited.
Part of this initiative is a special cupping competition called Taste of Harvest.
AFCA’s Taste of Harvest program is the leading regional cupping competition in Eastern and Southern Africa. It provides producers, millers, and exporters in AFCA member countries with a platform to showcase their coffee and identify the very best fine coffee in Africa.
While the main purpose of Taste of Harvest is to identify, catalogue, and promote the region’s quality coffees, the program has a much broader impact on the development of the region’s coffee sector by facilitating linkages between African producers and international buyers and building capacity across the African coffee value chain.
The results of the competition are published and buyers can approach the producers directly and make an offer to purchase this coffee.
This will partly be done next year via an online marketplace that is being developed by Bean Auction supported by ITC under the Supporting Indian Trade and Investment for Africa (SITA) project.
Bean Auction is working with AFCA to provide an online solution for a specialty coffee auctions and an electric platform for African coffee.
The new Taste of Harvest competition will use AFCA’s network of industry and local government connections to develop online specialty auctions that work for Africa.
Each country has a slightly different system with different legal and infrastructure constraints that need to be taken into consideration. Existing infrastructure in these countries will be leveraged to deliver measurable benefits to the coffee industry in Africa.
More information about final date and location will follow. Now this program is coming to Scandinavia under the leadership of Samuel Kamau, CEO, African Fine Coffee Association.
We will bring the best coffee from East Africa and Ethiopia and introduce this to interested buyers and media in Scandinavia. We will arrange two events; one in Stockholm and one in Copenhagen but these will be the first of many annual AFCA Taste of Harvests that we will arrange in Scandinavia.
These events are now planned for April, 2017.
If you are interested in participating as roaster, partner or sponsor, please contact Joachim Davidsson, CEO for B-Open Nordic in Sweden. jd@bopen.se
