Ethiopia is looking to trademark coffees in the EU to benefit its poor farmers

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.africa-interactive.net/index.php?PageID=4055

Ethiopia is looking to trademark coffees in the EU to benefit its poor farmers, in the face of opposition from Starbucks in the U.S. The Ethiopian move provides lessons for an African market that could be worth billions of dollars.

Coffee originated in Ethiopia today accounts for significant exports. Yet, in Ethiopian regions such as Sidamo, Harar and Yirgacheffe, familiar names to coffee fans around the world, coffee farmers live in abject poverty.

Most Ethiopians earn less than two dollars a day, and coffee farmers receive only a fraction of the price that their prestigious coffee fetches in cafés and shops in the developed world.

The Ethiopian government filed applications in 2005 to trademark Sidamo, Harar and Yirgacheffe as coffee brands in the European Union, Canada, Japan and the U.S. "Ethiopia wants more control over the distribution of fine coffee. Ultimately prices will get better," press secretary Gail Warden at Ethiopia's embassy in London told IPS.

Over the next two years, invitations will go out to European companies to become part of a network of distributors and promoters. "We think the potential for this type of strategy is huge," Ron Layton, founder and executive director of Light Years IP, an intellectual rights NGO that has been assisting Ethiopia with its applications, told IPS from his Washington, D.C. headquarters.

The NGO is preparing a report for the British government, due this autumn, that will show that impoverished African countries have a lot to earn from innovative ways of selling everything from agricultural products to batik designs. "The report indicates that the potential is in tens of billions of dollars in the future. Other African countries may need other strategies than Ethiopia, but the goal is the same," Layton said.


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