Bedessa
ETHIOPIA
Asnake Nigat, as the general manager of the Kata Muduga Cooperative, has worked with such big-name farmer groups as Hunda Oli, Duromina or Nano Challa. Asnake, with more than 10 years of experience behind him, has now established his own processing and export company. Our second coffee after the spicy Yabitu is a traditional natural-processed lot from the Hambela Bedessa washing station.
Ethiopia is the home of extraordinary coffees. Ethiopian coffee is instantly recognizable even in blind cuppings due to its distinctive flavour made up of several hundreds of indigenous arabica varietals grown wild in the various micro-climates of the country. 95% of Ethiopia’s 300 000 tonnes of coffee export is supplied by more than a million small, independent farmers. The rest is grown by an increasing number of private and state-owned plantations. Recently the Ethiopian government began reforming the export system to open the market and allow exporters and bigger farms (estates) to export their own coffee with one condition: the selling price must always be higher than that which would have been fixed by the ECX (Ethiopian Commodity Exchange) for a comparable quality of coffee. Several farms are currently in the process of applying for export licenses and have begun to detach themselves from the washing stations by processing and selling their own coffee.