Coffee output expected to triple to 100,000 T by 2020

Cameroon aims to triple annual coffee output to 100,000 tonnes over the next five years by attracting more young people into the business, where output has been in decline due to low investment levels and an ageing farming population.

Backed by the European Union, the government plans to invest more than 13 billion CFA francs ($21 million) into the sector, Omer Maledy, executive secretary of the Interprofessional Cocoa and Coffee Council, said on Friday.

The programme will create centres to produce cocoa and coffee seedlings, targeting around 452,000 farmers, he said at a fair aimed at attracting young farmers to the sector.

"There will be enough seedlings, which will enable us to raise production to about 100,000 tonnes within five years," Maledy said, adding that the plan would also sponsor more young people to join the sector.

Cameroon is Africa's fourth biggest cocoa producer and is also one of the few countries that grows both robusta and arabica coffee.

Production of coffee, one of the Central African country's main cash crops, bounced back to about 32,808 tonnes in the 2013/14 season from an all-time low of 16,000 tonnes the previous season. But it is still far from a record 156,000 tonnes produced in 1990.

"Farmers and the workforce are aging, hence we are seeing dwindling output and low income," said Joseph Tchoubane, a 77 year-old farmer from Nkongsamba, one of Cameroon's major coffee-growing areas in the Littoral Region.

Tchoubane said he could previously harvest up to 1.8 tonnes coffee each year from his farms, but output had dropped to around 300 kg in a good year.

Some farmers were skeptical of the programme's ability to attract young people into the labour and capital intensive business and reach the output target of 100,000 tonnes.

"We still work in an artisanal manner and productivity is low," Gregoire Viang Nkoum, 35, who farms in the eastern region of the country, said.