Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. The Ivory Coast is famous for its cocoa production, but there's another being that's starting to get even more attention.
We produced our old coffee. You have more and more local roasters that are coming up.
Before it was all about, you know, importing coffee that's produced, you know, in Europe.
Like chocolate. Much of Africa's coffee is sold to be processed abroad. But can one West African entrepreneur bring homegrown and roasted coffee to the African market.
We teach a lot of things about coffee, things I never knew about.
It's a new role in discovering and it's also always kind of evolving.
On this week's special episode of The Next Africa Podcast, I take a look at the growing popularity of specialty coffee inside Africa and meet one man who's looking at to put Ivorian coffee on the map alongside Ethiopia, Kenya and Ganda. I'm Jennifer Zabasaja, and this is the Next Africa Podcast, bringing you one story each week from the continent driving the future of global growth with the context
only Bloomberg can provide. When it comes to coffee, The big players most consumers know are Brazil, Vietnam, Indonesia and Colombia. While African farmers are making inroads on the global market, especially in East African countries like Ethiopia and Uganda, much of the coffee is shipped abroad whilst it's still green with most of the roasting and consumption happening abroad. But
Heidi Baydoun wants to change that. He's the entrepreneur behind Cafe Continent, a specialty coffee shop and roastery in the Ivorian economic hub of Abijan. I went to meet him at one of his roasteries to find out what it takes to build a new brand of home grown coffee.
Fourth generation Lebanese West African from from West Africa.
But but I.
I've been traveling a lot in the past the past years, and I did my undergrad in in Australia and Sydney and especially coffee culture over there. It was was very, very developed. And and after that, when I came back to to the Harvy Coast, I saw that there was an opportunity.
I took a lot of courses and I started the project.
And you call it a project, why why do you use that term not a business.
I guess initially it's not for me. It's it's it's not just about making money. You know, when you say business, he's always did the financials for me. There's there's more than just you know, making money. It's it's it's an ideology, it's a philosophy. It's it's you know, bringing people together. It's changing the paradigm. It's creating something new that basically maybe people will never you know, never thinking about in
the past. It's about hiring a team of people that don't necessarily know much about this culture, especially coffee culture, working together on the specific mission, specific goals that are for the future of you know, the continent. We produce our own coffee because it's written on the on the glass, but.
No one sees that.
No one understands that we roast our own coffee traditionally. That's how I guess, you know, people drink their coffee here. I would say there are two markets, right, there's the market that's like cheap coffee, you know, the nest cafe kind of coffee, and also the cheap powder ground coffee. And there's also the important coffee. So there's two different segments.
You know, we intervene in the you know, obviously in the segment where people used to consume important coffee because quality wise, this is what we're offering.
We're offering a very high quality coffee.
But what we are proposing is high quality coffee that is locally produced.
So we have.
Ivorian coffee beans that we select from the different villages in the western part of the country.
We usually go to those areas at least, you know, once a month. We tell them.
How we know we want the coffee to be kind of collected. The cherry is basically how the cherries should be tried, so and so forth. So we go all the way to this part of production and we have our own factory. We have you know, very high technologically advanced equipment, good processes, and we have our coffee shops as well, where we control also the quality of the coffee that is brood and that is basically.
Sold to our customers.
In a moment, we'll have more from my interview with Heidi, including his ambitions to grow Cafe Continent as a brand, plus our soft comodities reporter Mumbi Kitao will join us to explain the state of the coffee market in twenty twenty five. Welcome back today. We're talking African coffee and back at Cafe Continent. I asked Heidi where he wants to see the company in five years time.
Even here at the.
Factory level, we've basically expanded.
We've taken World War space.
We've also invested in new machines, higher capacity machines. When it comes to our coffee shops, we you know, we started with one small coffee shops, coffee shop thirty five scarimeters, and then we you know, developed other coffee shops. Now we have three operational coffee shops and we're opening a fourth and fifth one this year in Africa in the Irvy Coast. So four are going to be in Abi joh and one in San Pedro, which is another town
in the west part of the Airy Coast. And I'm actually working on a franchise model so that we can maybe start franchise in our concept.
Maybe at the end of the year. Is the interest there, Yeah, the interest has been there from the start.
We've had people interested asking about our concept, whether or not you know, they can collaborate open the same thing in different you know, places around the world, different cities, we've.
Had people interested globally.
Yeah, globally yeah five year ago for Claffic Contina would be at least in West Africa to be the number one high quality coffee after we are in the air coasts, but we might not be in West Africa yet, so we have to develop also our brand in neighboring countries such a Ghana, Ancheria, Senegal and so on and so forth.
So this is something we need to work on.
So open the first shops outside of the air coast, whether in the region or not, you know, whether in Africa or not, what do present and other places.
Around the world.
So how challenging is the market for African coffee. Right now, joining me is Mumbi, Guitar Bloomberg Soft Commodities reporter back on the podcast. Mumbe, it's great to have you back. How are you doing.
I'm very fine. It's happy to be buck.
It's really nice to have you so, Mumbi, you have traveled the continent looking at a number of commodities. We're talking today about coffee. When we look at African producers and African coffee producers, how do they stack up against some of the other coffee producers globally.
When it comes to the African continent, a lot of focus is placed on Ethiopia, which is the biggest produce over Arabica beans, and we have Uganda which is now the biggest producer of robusta beans. That's within the African continent. But there's also focus on countries like Rhonda, Burundi, Kenya that produce what you'd consider specialty coffee. They do not export in huge time aged like Ethiopia and Uganda, but they do produce the premium coffee that most of the European market prefer.
You talk about the European market, which we'll get to some of the export markets and a little bit. But we've had you on the podcast before talking about the rising and I guess the volatile price of chocolate right because of climate change. When we think about climate change, is it affecting the price of beans and the effects on coffee farmers as much. So.
The story with cocoa, which is the ingredient in chocolate, is the same for coffee. The trees are quite similar in terms that they are tree crops and they have similar challenges when it comes to climate change. We reported earlier this year about coffee prices getting to record prices, and that was mainly because of drought in Brazil, and before that we had drought in Vietnam. So it's also production is literally determined by how the weather and how the climate plays out.
The King Crowers isn't attractive though, for African coffee farmers as it is for African cocoa farmers. Can you compare those two for us?
They're both attractive depending on what the market is doing, depending on the price. So last year was a very good year to be a cocoa farmer and still is right now if your market is liberalized. It was also a good time to be coffee trader or coffee farmer at the start of this year. The thing is that with coffee we have a lot more producers, so if one country is lacking, then another country will pick up.
But with coco, we have two big producers in Africa, so it's easy for them to kind of benefit when the market is heading up because they are the sole place where the world is reliant on.
Is there something that we should be watching for when it comes to African coffee farmers? And I say that because this independent entrepreneur that I met in the Ivory Coast. He's really making a push to get the global consumers to understand more about this African the beans and the specialty coffee and just how rich it is. What is it that maybe we should know and we should be watching war and you as a soft commodities reporter that you're looking.
At not just as a soft commodities reporter. I come from Kenya, where we used to be one of the biggest producers of coffee in Africa, and that's no longer the case, but still Kenya is one of the biggest producers of specialty coffee, same as Round, the same as Africa,
same as other smaller origins in Africa. I think the key for them is value addition and the entrepreneur you met with, that's a good way to try and capture the market because if you look at the supply chain, the family receives about five to ten percent of the retail price of coffee, whereas the rest of the margin goes to the trader, and a huge margin also goes to the rostera Rosa's like Nestley, such big companies tend
to take up that kind of imagine. So if Africa was going to grow in its coffee production, and it's in revenue and income. They need to focus more on value addition, creating their own rosteries, selling their own coffee, drinking their own coffee. I think that's a good place to start. Growing up, we didn't drink a lot of coffee.
We drank a lot more tea. So if Africa was to boost its own consumption rather than exporting all its coffee to the European and the American markets, then there will be more room for growth for the farmers and their income.
Are those trends changing?
Do you see that some countries the trend seems to be changing. I mean if theopy is a predominantly coffee drinker, but their countries like Kenya, you Ganda, where coffee consumption is trying to make in roads, but it's only within the urban centers where you find maybe a java or an upscale at cafe where the younger millennials or the gen z are happy to grab a cap and almost
like brag with it on Instagram. But we just need to get that more at home consumption where it's a consideration from breakfasts the same way in Europe everyone gets coffee for their breakfasts.
And this is this is a tradition that I deal with human bee. How do you like your coffee? Do you do you drink coffee?
Joh And I don't know why you do this to me.
I have to You're Kenyon and you're you're not just a suf commodities reporter. Do you like coffee?
Should I lie? Should I tell the truth? I do like coffee only when I really need the caffeine boosts. But I am really a tea drinker. And after having the water bowl, do you know there's always this controversy whether you add the milk first or the tea bug fast. But I put my water on tea bug and then milk later. But I think I am warming up to coffee slowly. The it's slow. Let's start with instant. Then we're going to get to the lattice of the cappuccinos.
Much still has a place in this podcast because of course, tea is a very big market for so appreciate that insight. Thanks so much, Mumbi Guitao, and thank you also to Haidi Baydude, the founder of Cafe Continent, for showing me around his grocery in Abijan. This program was produced by Adrian Bradley and tiba Adebayo. Don't forget to follow and review the show wherever you usually get your podcasts. I'm Jennifer Zabisaja. Thanks as always for listening