From Underdog to Frontrunner: The Opportunities of Specialty Robusta | Emi-Beth Aku Quantson | Re:co 2022
While the use of wild coffees is still years away from commercialization, another coffee species already makes up 40% of coffee's global production: Coffea robusta.
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Lower global demand and limited recognition of robusta's quality potential has stifled investment in exploring the opportunities of specialty robusta, but in the face of climate change, it feels as if its time has come. Emi-Beth Aku Quantson makes the case for reframing robusta as a specialty product across impacts from farmer livelihoods to consumer preferences.
About the Presenter
Emi-Beth Aku Quantson
Chief Problem Solver, Kawa Moka Coffee Company
Emi-Beth is the founder of Kawa Moka Coffee Company, a social enterprise coffee company based in Ghana, West Africa. Starting with a cafe in her final year at Ashesi University, Emi-Beth took a brief hiatus from coffee (into accounting) and then returned with a deep plunge into entrepreneurship after attending the 2013 Re:co and Expo events in Seattle and deciding that "coffee people" are the coolest on the planet and definitely in a space she wanted to play in.
Returning to Ghana from a 2 year work stint in Kenya, Emi-Beth founded Kawa Moka Cafe, operating cafes in incubator spaces including Impact Hub in Accra and Meltwater Entrepreneurial school of technology.
Recognizing the deep need of coffee farmers in Ghana to improve the quality of coffee produced and also to be connected with a global market buying at a fair price, Emi-Beth began working with rural farmers, including and highlighting women, in a community in the highest altitude area of Ghana, Leklebi. In 2019 Emi-Beth went a step further from working with rural farmers, by starting the Kawa Moka Roastery—adding value locally to Robusta coffee grown in Ghana by processing and roasting Made-In-Ghana Robusta Coffee for global retail. Thereby challenging the African narrative of exporting raw material to be re-imported as a finished good at astronomical prices.
Through her work, Emi-Beth's ambition is to encourage women to sustainable farming, challenge the narrative of Robusta as the "ugly sister" in coffee, and transfer skills and knowledge to make Robusta from Ghana a well-loved option for coffee drinkers globally— thereby creating jobs and empowering women along the value chain.
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Re:co Symposium returns April 19-20, 2023 in Portland, Oregon, US. Learn more: https://recosymposium.org/