BOARD ANNOUNCEMENT – AUGUST 2022
The Board of Africa Fine Coffees Association (AFCA) is pleased to announce the appointment of Ms. Nancy Cheruiyot as the new Executive Director/Chief Executive Officer.
Ms. Cheruiyot has extensive experience in the Coffee Sector in Kenya where she served as a Managing Trustee for Commodities Fund for the last 9 Years. During her tenure there, she was appointed continuously to represent Kenya in the ICO and IACO as delegate where she demonstrated high level professionalism and diplomacy.
Ms. Cheruiyot has also been an active member of AFCA representing her immediate past employer, the Commodities Fund.
She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of Nairobi; a Master of Business Administration (Finance) from the Catholic University of Eastern Africa; and is currently pursuing a PHD in Business Administration from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology. Additionally, Ms. Cheruiyot is a Chartered Certified Accountant and a member of ACCA since 2007. She brings on board over 15 years’ experience of financial and organizational management and development, the last 9 of which she was the Managing Trustee/CEO.
Ms. Cheruiyot’s first task will be to organize the 2023 AFCA Conference and Exhibition proposed to take place from the 15th – lIth February 2023 immediately after the World Coffee Producers’ Forum taking place on the 13th and 14th February in Kigali Rwanda one of Africa’s specialty coffee countries.
The First World Coffee Producers Forum met in the city of Medellin, Colombia, on July 12, 2017, and considering that: Profitability of coffee farming in many producing countries faces a critical situation, even going through periods of losses, due to different factors such
as: lower international coffee prices, which have dramatically deteriorated the coffee trade terms (reducing the purchasing power of coffee growers), low agricultural productivity, increasing production costs related to climate change and variability, and rising labor costs of production activities such as harvest.
- Lower profitability has led a significant percentage of coffee producers in the world
to live in poverty, with deprivations in their quality of life (housing, utilities, delayed or poorly attended education, low access to health systems, etc.), and reduced ability to reinvest in their farms. - Even if development of specialty coffee in the last decades has generated some premiums to producers, these have not been enough to o set the costs associated with certifications, and the analysis of value of the global coffee chain shows that the share reaching producers is very low, in contrast to that remaining in the hands of traders, roasting companies, and distributors to final consumers.
To read more please visit Page 26 to 27 of our July – September 2017 Magazine Issue.