Cameroon’s Coffee Industry Embraces Digital Transformation for EU Compliance
In a bid to revolutionize Cameroon’s coffee industry, Dimitra, a blockchain-powered agri-tech firm, and Arasco Food BV, an international food trading company, have launched a pilot project to digitize coffee supply chains and ensure they meet the European Union’s deforestation regulations (EUDR). Dimitra Europe GmbH leads this initiative, leveraging block chain technology to enhance agricultural practices and comply with the new EU standards.
The project employs Dimitra’s Connected Coffee platform to offer blockchain-based traceability, guaranteeing transparency and regulatory adherence. Targeting 5,000 small holder farmers in Cameroon, the initiative provides essential tools for farm registration, crop management, and data collection, aligning with EU regulations that ban imports from deforested lands after 2020.
Andreas Cerdan, director of Dimitra Europe, expressed excitement about the collaboration, noting its potential to modernize coffee production in remote areas. The Connected Coffee platform combines AI, satellite imagery, IoT, and genomics to stabilize yields and boost coffee quality and quantity.
Müsteçep Aras, CEO of Arasco Food BV, highlighted the project’s benefits for sustainable coffee production and community support. With training and farm registration already underway in Cameroon’s Littoral and West regions, there are plans to extend this digital transformation to global supply chains, ensuring complete traceability and compliance.
Cameroon is still a small player in coffee production and marketing on the global market. Despite holding the 54th position worldwide in sales volume, with a market share peaking at a mere 0.1% between 2018 and 2022, the Cameroonian coffee is highly sought after in certain countries, mainly Algeria, France, Belgium, and Portugal.
According to an official report from the Competitiveness Committee, a specialized body of the Ministry of Economy, these four countries alone absorbed 62.9% of Cameroon’s coffee exports in 2022. Algeria, officially the largest buyer, purchased 18.6% of shipments over the period.
The second buyer, France, only bought 15.5% of the coffee produced in Cameroon in 2022, 3% less than Algeria and 1% more than Belgium (14.5%) and Portugal (14.3%). while Cameroon boasted a coffee production of 130,000 tons in the 1990s, the country recorded a marketed production of only 12,157 tons during the 2020-2021 season, down 50.7% compared to the previous season, according to data from the National Cocoa and Coffee Board (ONCC).
