By Andualem Sisay and Kirubel Tadesse
A few months ago, Oxfam had accused US coffee chain Starbucks of denying Ethiopia more than 88 USD a year. Oxfam reported that Starbucks asked the National Coffee Association (NCA) to block the country's bid to trademark three types of coffee bean in the US but Starbucks had denied initiating any kind of opposition to Ethiopian trademark application.
It was also reported that the Ethiopian government filed its applications to trademark its coffee bean names - Sidamo, Harar and Yirgacheffe and at that time Oxfam claimed that Starbucks flagged up the application to the NCA, which then filed its opposition at the US Patent and Trademark Office.
After a months long dispute earlier this year, Starbucks has signed distribution, marketing and licensing agreements with Ethiopia and has agreed to assist in expanding consumer awareness of Ethiopia's coffee brands- Sidamo, Harar/Harrar and Yirgacheffe.
Howard Schultz, the Chairman of Starbucks who paid a three day visit to Addis Ababa this week with his senior officials, vows to pay premium prices for Ethiopian coffee.
Even if Prime Minister Meles showed no indication of agreeing that Ethiopia had gone the wrong routes to success; he seemed to be satisfied with the 'unprecedented decision' of Starbucks.
"All of the disagreements are behind us now because of the decision made by the chairman," said Prime Minister Meles, during a joint press briefing he gave with Howard Schultz, Starbucks Chairman, at the Prime Minister's office on Wednesday, November 28, 2007.
"He made an unprecedented decision in favoring our coffee farmers by recognizing their property rights. It has never done before for any other product from a country such as Ethiopia," he added.
"The issue of the trademark was never as contentious as it was reported," said Chairman Howard Schultz later on, in an exclusive interview with Capital on Thursday November 29, 2007 at Sheraton Addis.
He said: "We were having very positive discussions with representatives of the government for much of the past six months or so and the Ambassador has been to Seattle a number of times as have members of the coffee industry. Our interest has always been the same" .
Explaining the dispute, Schultz said: "The Ethiopian government wanted to potentially trade mark pieces of geography that stand for where the coffee is from, whether it is Harar or Sidamo or any other place and that is their privilege and their right. Starbucks as a company, we can't tell any government what to do or what not to do, we are just customers.
He added that the better way proposed was for Starbucks to be in total alignment with coffee farmers to build a partnership around sustainability, high quality premium coffee, and for that, Starbucks should pay a premium price for the coffee.
Starbucks has also indicated its readiness to support Ethiopian coffee farmers by opening a farmers support center in Addis Ababa in 2008.
The farmers support facility, which is the first in Africa and the only second after Costa Rica, is designed to enable Starbucks to work collaboratively with Ethiopian farmers to raise both the quality and production of the country's high quality specialty coffees.
During this visit, the chairman with his officials discussed the issue with some coffee farmers and coffee industry representatives.
Between 2002 and 2006, Starbucks increased its Ethiopian coffee purchases by nearly 400 percent. Today, Ethiopian coffee is found in nearly all of Starbuck's U.S stores.