Tanzanian Coffee Project

Year Published:  1977
Resource Type:  Organization
Cx Number:  CX430

A slide tape show about cooperative coffee farming in Tanzania and the coffee industry.

Abstract: 
The Tanzanian Coffee Project is composed of returned Canadian University Service Overseas workers whose ressearch and experience has taught them that many of the Third World's problems originate in rich countries through trade policies and through support of multinational corporations. They feel that, as Canadians, we must search for economic alternatives in a domestic and international system where the "little man"" becomes the victim of huge and powerful interests.

This project has addressed itself to the issue of coffee production and export in Tanzania. In Tanzania, coffee is cultivated and prepared for export by more than 20 per cent of the economically active population; much of this is done on a cooperative level. Although many of the revenues from coffee exports are taken by the government in taxes and levies, much of this is returned to rural areas in the form of development funds. However, since only 10 per cent of the coffee crop is processed in Tanzania, much potential profit is lost because of the economic necessity to export unprocessed coffee to rich countries. The Tanzanian coffee project is responding to this situaiton by buying and selling to Canadians coffee processed by the Tanganyika Coffee Company. This is the only company which processes coffee in East and Central Africa; it is 10 per cent owned by a coffee cooperative and 90 per cent owned by the Tanzanian govenment.

The Tanzanian Coffee Project suggests that this is only one of many economic alternatives available to Canadians. This group also distributes a 30 minute slide/tape show entitled "Coffee: The Rules of the Games." It provides an outline of the coffee industry on an international level and clearly demonstrates how the poor countries become the losers at the hands of the rich countries and the multinationals.

This abstract was published in the Connexions Digest in 1977.