Coffee Monitor: Ethiopia

Independent evidence on Ethiopia's coffee economy · Seattle, Washington

Standing questions

Six questions, each with an institution that could answer it in an afternoon.

None of these asks anyone to build a statistical system. Each asks for a document that either already exists or would take a working day to produce. That is the test a question has to pass to appear here.

A question stays on this page until the named blocker is answered in writing or otherwise dispositioned. What was asked, when, of whom, and what came back is logged below, including when nothing comes back. No reply is part of the correspondence record. It is not evidence that the underlying data do not exist.

The questions

6 asked · 1 answered · 1 reviewed with no response · 4 awaiting reply · reviewed 16 September 2026
Question 1 Asked, awaiting reply

Where is the written close-of-year release for crop year 2025/26?

Who could close it
Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority
Status
Asked. Awaiting reply, review due 7 October 2026.
What would close it
A first-party year-end table, downloadable query or equivalent public account that lets the fixed green-coffee rows be tested on the same scope: HS 0901.11 and 0901.12 or an explicitly equivalent definition; export earnings on an FOB basis in US dollars or with an official conversion basis; export volume in net kilogrammes; the fiscal period and revision status; and domestic-export versus re-export treatment where the system distinguishes them. A broader headline coffee total may still be useful, but it does not by itself close the scored green-coffee rows.
Why it matters
The export rows are designed to be reconstructed on one fixed scope. A written annual release triggers re-adjudication; it does not move the rows automatically. If earnings and volume pass the same scope and evidence tests, the implied export unit value is then derived from those two published inputs.
Log
7 September 2026. Request sent to the Authority's published address, for the attention of the office responsible for coffee statistics and annual export reporting, asking for the written year-end export account for 2018 E.C. and the definitions behind it. Reviewed for reply by 7 October 2026.
The same underlying record, the official close-out of the coffee year, was separately requested from the Ministry of Planning and Development on 31 August 2026. See question six.
Question 2 Asked, awaiting reply

What does the joint daily coffee price desk record, and why is its output not public?

Who could close it
ECTA and the National Bank of Ethiopia
Status
Asked at the National Bank. Awaiting reply, review due 7 October 2026.
What would close it
A description of what the desk records and how the series is constructed, and publication of the series itself if it can be released.
Why it matters
Coffee Monitor holds no institutional document for the desk; the only source is our own working paper, which this standard refuses as evidence for our own claim. The desk is therefore unrated, not rated at state two. If the series is already maintained in usable form, publication would require no new data-collection system. What remains to be established is that the desk operates as described, what the series contains, how it is constructed, and whether it can be made public. Note that the internal desk and the published minimum registration price are different objects; the index adjudicates the latter separately.
Log
7 September 2026. Question sent to the National Bank through its institutional address, for the attention of the Director of the Statistics Directorate, asking whether the joint daily desk operates, what it records, how the series is constructed, and whether the output can be released. The letter states that the published minimum registration price is treated as a separate object. Reviewed for reply by 7 October 2026. Not yet put to the Coffee and Tea Authority.
Question 3 Asked, awaiting reply

Does the Ethiopian Coffee Traceability and Management System record the transaction price, and at what point in the chain does it begin recording?

Who could close it
Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority
Status
Answered by GIZ, that branch closed. Open with the Coffee and Tea Authority, review due 1 October 2026.
What would close it
A statement of the system's data model: which fields are captured, at which node, and whether recording starts at the first transaction with the grower or further up at aggregation.
Why it matters
The system traces coffee from local warehouses to export points, with farm geolocation attached afterwards, per GIZ's SUVASE factsheet of 19 June 2025. Whether it registers a transaction event, and therefore a price, is what this question asks. Either answer is useful. If a transaction price is already captured, a farm-gate series exists in draft and needs only to be published. If it is not, adding the field is a far smaller undertaking than building the system was. A third possibility deserves naming: a system can satisfy Europe by linking a lot to a plot at the washing station without ever recording what the grower was paid, which would look complete abroad and tell Ethiopia nothing.
Log
GIZ, closed. Asked 28 August 2026: five questions sent to the project contact named in GIZ's SUVASE factsheet of 19 June 2025. Acknowledged and forwarded 31 August. Answered 1 September by GIZ Ethiopia, substantively. The reply confirms in writing that GIZ, through the SUVASE programme, supported the Coffee and Tea Authority both financially and technically in developing the system, and that a local software company was contracted by the Authority to build it. It does not answer the five questions and does not claim GIZ cannot; it refers them to the Authority's IT Executive Director as lead responsible for the system. Coffee Monitor reads that referral as an indication that the answers exist and sit with the Authority rather than with the donor. This branch is closed and nothing further is owed.

The Coffee and Tea Authority, open. Asked 1 September 2026: the same five questions, unchanged, sent to the officer GIZ named, with GIZ Ethiopia copied. Reviewed for reply by 1 October 2026, thirty days from the date sent. If nothing has arrived by then, that will be logged as the finding.

4 September 2026. Two findings recorded against this question from an independent study of the Sidama, Gedeo and Guji belt. First, the 2001 proclamation created primary market centres and outlawed the informal collectors known as sebsabies, and the study finds collectors and their successor brokers still dominate first sales while operating informally. Second, Directive 1106/2025 raised the export certificate capital requirement to between 15 and 20 million birr, with a retrievable copy on the Ministry of Justice site. Both bear on whether any national system could reach the first sale at all, and neither changes the state of this question.
Question 4 Reviewed, no response

Did the record come from price or from volume?

Who could close it
National Bank of Ethiopia
Status
Reviewed 16 September 2026. No response received.
What would close it
One table of monthly coffee export volume and value for the fiscal year, with the definitions used. A single page.
Why it matters
The Bank stated in writing on 31 March 2026 that coffee export volume fell against the previous year, and in the same release that coffee export earnings improved significantly, across the same eight months. It gave a figure for neither. If both hold, those eight months were carried by price rather than quantity, which makes the question of how much of that price reached the grower sharper rather than softer. See the record entry.
Log
17 August 2026: written request sent to the National Bank of Ethiopia through its institutional correspondence address, for the attention of Ato Abebayehu Dufera, Director, Statistics Directorate, with internal copies requested to Ato Habtamu Workineh, Director, Research Directorate, and the office of H.E. Fikadu Digafe, Vice Governor and Chief Economist, asking for the monthly volume and value table underlying the 31 March release. No reply as of 17 August 2026. Reviewed for reply by 16 September 2026, thirty days from the date sent; if nothing has arrived by then, that will be logged as the finding.
16 September 2026, review point. No response or responsive document was received from the National Bank of Ethiopia. The Bank's published 2024/25 annual report reports total coffee exports of 470,714.88 thousand kilogrammes, confirming that an official annual volume figure exists. The monthly table underlying the 31 March release remains unrecovered.
This is recorded against the institution and not against any named official. It is not a finding of refusal or of noncompliance, and it is not evidence that the table does not exist.
Question 5 Answered

When a farmer-share figure is cited, what definition and calculation are being used?

Who could close it
Whoever has published a farmer-share figure
Status
Answered 8 September 2026. Cited with permission.
What would close it
For any published farmer-share figure, whether 40, 60, or 80 percent: the numerator, the denominator, the product form, the point in the chain the price was taken at, the period, the geography, and the conversion method used between farm-gate and export form. A first-draft definition of the terms is offered on the Method page so it can be compared against, improved, or replaced.
Why it matters
Farmer-share figures circulate without any of the above ever being stated, which makes them impossible to check or compare. This question is answerable now, by anyone who has published one. It is distinct from publishing a national farmer-share series, which requires the farm-gate price series the four questions above are working toward, and belongs in Research as a proposal, not here as a question, until that record exists.
Log
7 September 2026. Question put to Bart Minten of IFPRI, an author of the study most often cited for the 60 percent figure, asking what the numerator, denominator, coffee form, chain point, period and conversion were.
8 September 2026. Answered. The producer-share figure was adopted from TechnoServe rather than calculated in the study, and producer shares vary materially with international coffee prices. Cited with his written permission, given 12 September 2026.
This closes the question as put. It does not establish a farmer share for Ethiopia: it establishes where the circulating figure came from, which is a different and prior thing. The underlying TechnoServe calculation and its definitions remain the object to retrieve.
Question 6 Asked, awaiting reply

Where is the plan-performance record for the coffee year, showing target against actual?

Who could close it
Ministry of Planning and Development
Status
Asked. Awaiting reply, review due 30 September 2026.
What would close it
The 2018 E.C. performance report, National Result Matrix record, or sector submission giving coffee export volume, export earnings, production, and productivity as target against actual, with the definitions and units used. Or a statement identifying the public report, or the responsible office, from which those figures can be obtained.
Why it matters
A 2025/26 export target of 600,000 tonnes and more than three billion dollars was stated publicly by the Prime Minister and by the Ministry of Agriculture. No final official export volume against that target has been located. The most recent officially published volume remains the National Bank's 2024/25 figure of 470,714 tonnes, for the preceding year. A target announced and never reconciled against an actual is the pattern this record exists to document, and the planning system is the one institution whose explicit function is to hold both numbers in the same place.
Log
31 August 2026. Request sent to the Ministry of Planning and Development's general address, for the attention of the Minister, asking for the 2018 E.C. coffee plan-performance record and the corresponding 2019 E.C. targets, and noting that a reference to an already public document would be sufficient. Reviewed for reply by 30 September 2026, thirty days from the date sent. If nothing has arrived by then, that will be logged as the finding.

How this page works

Method
  • A question earns its place by being answerable. If closing it would require building a statistical system, it is a proposal and belongs in the research, not here. Every question on this page names a document that could be produced in a working day.
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  • Replies are published in full, not summarised, and a reply that corrects Coffee Monitor is credited to the institution by name in the corrections log. Being right in public is worth something.
  • A reply is logged when it arrives, not when the window closes. The review date is the point at which continued silence is recorded as a finding. It is not a waiting period, and nothing stops a question closing the day after it is asked.
  • Silence is recorded, not editorialised. The log states the date asked and that no reply has been received. It does not characterise the silence, and it is recorded against the institution rather than any named official.
  • Questions to individuals carry no review date. A researcher owes no reply to an outside enquiry. Their questions are logged as asked and answered, and never as unanswered.
  • A question closes only on a retrievable document. A verbal assurance moves nothing, which is the same standard the coverage index applies to everything else.

If you can answer one of these

Send the document. A qualifying source, captured and tested against the published method, closes a question and is logged with the source credited. Retrievable is necessary but not sufficient: it still has to pass the scope, unit and reconstructibility tests. That offer is made in earnest, to officials and to anyone else who has the paper: wondwossen.mezlekia@coffeemonitor.com.

Journalists are welcome to put any of these to the institutions named. A question asked by a reporter gets an answer that a website asking cannot, and no attribution to Coffee Monitor is required.