BACKGROUND & RATIONALE

Following the launch of the first African Youth in Coffee Forum (AYCF) that was held virtually on March 11th, 2022, by the IACO Secretariat, the idea to host an African Youth Coffee Barista Championship was conceived. It was noted during the discussions, that coffee consumption in Africa though still negligible was increasing mainly driven by a proliferation of cafés in many African capitals coupled with the emergence and rapid growth of an urbanized middle class and growing youthful population. The forum noted that these positive trends therefore provided a great opportunity for barista competitions to be promoted in order to assist in developing skills for job creation and propagating a coffee drinking culture among the youth.
 Currently, the African continent has very few barista competitions because the coffee culture especially in the sub-Saharan is still very low with the average per capita consumption estimated below 1 kg per person. In the case of the developed world where per capita consumption is high and ranges above 7 kg per person, hundreds of barista competitions are conducted annually with the premier event being the World Barista Championship an equivalent to a World Cup Soccer event of coffees. These competitions are unsurprisingly dominated by participants from western consuming countries because of a developed coffee culture combined with an advanced value addition infrastructure. Likewise, the emerging popularity of the barista competitions in the Middle East and Asian regions have increased consumption and created a myriad of new cafes in cities like Hong Kong, Dubai and Doha which are now attracting many of the “few” skilled African barristers. This trend has generated new interest among many unemployed African youths to acquire coffee barrister skills, more so, as coffee consumption increases in Africa, the demand for training of coffee barristers is expected to rise exponentially to meet the growing demand.
It is against this background that IACO will organize the first edition of the Africa Youth Barista Championship (AYBC) which will be held in Lomé, Togo during the 62nd Annual Meetings from November the 14th to the 18th 2022. The AYBC will be an annual event held in line with IACO’s strategic plan to promote domestic coffee consumption in Africa under the DACBA (Drink African Coffee Build Africa) initiative.

OBJECTIVES

• Promote a coffee drinking culture in Africa
• Build awareness and promotion of good quality African origin coffees
• Create a robust continental coffee barista program and galvanize African coffee professionals to network and come up with new innovations for the industry
• Provide practical skills for the youth to create jobs and contribute to economic development for the continent.

TARGETED GROUPS

• Youth from vocational, university, cafes, restaurants etc
• National Barista Champions from all 54 AU members
• Private sector groups active in coffee value chain (farmers, roasters exporters)
• National Coffee bodies and organizations
• Civil society groups

EXPECTED OUTCOMES

• Increased awareness on the role of IACO and benefits to member states;
• Promoted coffee drinking culture among the youth in Africa;
• Increased brand awareness and influence of African coffees at the national, regional and international levels
• Developed institutional and capacity building which are expected to create innovation, jobs for the youth in hotels, restaurants and cafes;
• Increased revenue for the country as more taxes are received through job creation and better prices for producers and other available opportunities in the coffee value chain;
• Established database and network of African youth and professionals in the coffee value chain