On 19 May 2020 at 13:00 (BST), the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) is holding a webinar on 'Kenya’s Coffee Sector in the COVID-19 Context: Can producer agency be sustained?'. This webinar, part of the 'Empowering Producers In Commercial agriculture’ (EPIC) project, is the fifth in a series of webinars. It will share and debate experiences around a social enterprise that has been seeking to cause positive social and economic disruption within the coffee industry.
Vava Coffee began operations in 2009 and has a decade of rich experience of tackling barriers to an inclusive, fair, and sustainable coffee sector. Vava Coffee is now facing unprecedented conundrums from COVID-19 as cancelled buyer contracts and reduction in order volumes raise questions over the resilience of ethical supply chains, SMEs, and social enterprises in global agriculture value chains. The webinar will discuss what these changes mean for producers and debate strategies going forward to sustain the progress in coffee producer agency made to date with a sharp focus on the work on women and youth.
Panellists
- Vava Angwenyi from Vava Coffee
- Brian Marare, young beneficiary of Vava Coffee’s mentorship and current intern farm manager at Vava Coffee, Kenya
- Holly Kragiopolous, North Star Coffee Roasters, UK; a Vava Coffee buyer
The panellists will consider questions of interest to practitioners working on similar issues in different contexts such as:
- How have women coffee farmers and youth entrepreneurs been successfully supported in their relationships with other value chain actors to secure more agency in the sector?
- What conditions are needed to be in place for this work to be effective? What challenges remain?
- What are the main implications of COVID-19 and government response measures to date for producer agency and the value chains they connect to?
- In this rapidly changing context, how do social enterprises keep supporting their beneficiaries, in particular women and youth, to sustain progress made prior to COVID-19?
- What challenges are foreseen in the coming period and how might we tackle them collectively as a global community?
This webinar is designed for rural producer organisations, private sector, civil society, and development agencies.