Cameroon will from Thursday March 21 to Saturday 23 hold a coffee festival in some eleven towns of the country. The event, code-named, "Festicoffee" will be an opportunity to measure the path the country has covered in processing coffee locally, coffee consumption as well as share some best practices that would boost production, processing and consumption.

The Minister of Trade (Mincommerce), Luc Magloire Mbarga Atangana, accompanied by his colleague of Communication, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, gave a press briefing in Yaounde last Friday March 15 on the importance of the event and the stakes and challenges of the sector. Placed on the theme, "Coffee, an attractive market," the three-day festival will future coffee exhibition at the Yaounde May 20 Boulevard, debates on the stakes and challenges of the sector, sensitisation and tasting in producing towns across the country.

Like the cocoa festival which held in 2012, Minister Mbarga Atangana said "festicoffee" will give us an opportunity to celebrate strides in the sector and jointly seek ways of embracing best practices so as to benefit from the ready market of the product. It will be an opportunity for us to valorise our produce, seek ways of better producing what we consume and consuming what we produce as wished by the Head of State."

The Cocoa and Coffee Interprofessional Board (CICC) will also use the coffee festival to sell the "New Generation Programme" which seeks to bring youth on board to rejuvenate coffee production. Target of the programme is to integrate about 150 youths annually to the sector to create 450 hectares of new coffee and cocoa plantations and to increase output by at least 1,000 kg per hectare.

Other programmes that will be better explained to the public during the coffee show include a support programme for the marketing of coffee, climate change observatory in the coffee and cocoa production basins, local processing and access of producers to financing, promotion of best practices as well as certification. There will also be an award of prices of excellence to stakeholders who would distinguish themselves during the coffee show. Cameroon, Minister Mbarga Atangana said, is the 6th coffee producer in Africa with 38,000 metrics tonnes yearly and about the 20th in the world.