Let’s say that the global coffee industry generates $460 billion in revenue in a year.
- How much of it goes to Africa (the whole continent)?
- How much of it goes to Starbucks?
answer
I found this transcription of a talk between Russian and Ugandan delegations. The Ugandan president, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, says that:
the global business for coffee is worth $460 billion. […] But of those $460 billion the coffee producing countries of the whole world share only $25 billion and Africa shares only $2.4 billion out of $460 billion. […] Germany earns more from coffee than the whole of Africa. Germany earns $6.85 billion from coffee […]
I am not sure how I can verify these claims. I found the coffee industry stats on Statista but their graphs vs. the text summaries show different numbers:
- Africa’s revenue in the Coffee market amounts to US$4bn in 2023. But the graph looks like $7.5 billion.
- Global revenue in the Coffee market amounts to US$88bn in 2023. Graph looks like $450 billion though.
- Germany’s revenue in the Coffee market amounts to US$7bn in 2023. Graph looks like $45 billion. They don’t grow any coffee.
Whichever numbers are correct the bigger picture remains the same.
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I guessed
- $1 billion
- $459 billion
I checked the answer and I was really close.
I’ll have a think about how to research this. If I don’t come up with anything, I’ll just say that one thing to watch out for is dodgy accounting.
Africa might not get revenue made in Africa. It might just be on the books as African revenue for a multinational to avoid paying higher western taxes for that portion of the supply chain. Or it might be that so much of African coffee sales are used to pay off IMF loans that can be traced back essentially to western coffee multinational shareholders. This will distort the final picture.
Museveni might be working with certain assumptions that produce a certain figure that western sources will never lead to (because they’re working with conflicting assumptions). (It’s like when CEOs say that a worker pay rise will bankrupt the company because they’ve already counted two avoidable things as operational costs: the CEO’s unreasonable pay rise and loan repayments made to a company owned by the CEO or other shareholders to avoid paying tax on senior wages or dividends.)
