Les cafés robusta africains peuvent-ils encore être compétitifs?

Since the late 1980s, the world coffee market has slumped into a recession due to a structural disequilibrium between supply and demand. Can African countries remain competitive? A comparative analysis of coffee's cost structure shows that southeastern Asian countries have an absolute advante over South-American and African competitors. Whereas the Asian lands have managed to compress costs due to middlement so as to leave more money in peasants' pockets, the others have shifted the costs of adjustments to producers or have subsidize coffee. Could devaluating the money restore competitiveness? Although such a policy did succeed in souhtereastern Asia, it did not in Brazil or Uganda, nor in Guinea where the cost structure remained much the same as in neighboring CFA-countries that did not devaluate. The future of Robusta coffee in Africa depends on producers' reactions to world prices. The best hypothesis has emerged in recent months: a limited rise in prices to 7,00 FF/kg. This should suffice as an incentive for producers to adopt an intensive system of cultivation.