From July to September 2021, I carried out a first field mission as part of my doctoral research. As a reminder, this research which started under the professional supervision of AVPA is aiming to identify, experiment and propose different conceptual tools and/or action levers that would allow to reach the economic and social impact commensurate with the potential and the need of this sector.
This first mission was an opportunity for me to collect the perception of the coffee sector by the actors upstream of the value chain. I had the pleasure to meet a dozen coffee growers’ cooperatives in their working environment and to have interviews first in the plateaus of southern Togo and then in the mountains of western Ivory Coast.
Major challenges are still to be met at every link in the value chain. However, I observed a real enthusiasm among the actors for a restructuration of the whole sector. On the field, this enthusiasm is reflected in the use of the private sector on the one hand, and in the encouragement of local consumption of locally processed coffee on the other.
From this first mission, I remember that AVPA approach, which consists in making the coffee farmer a processor and taster of his or her own coffee, has many original features that would allow to make the sector more dynamic, provided that the various initiatives are coordinated.
