Ethiopia coffee conflict: overview
- Renewed conflict involves Ethiopia’s government and coalition including TPLF
- Ethiopia produces 4.4% of global coffee output
- Coffee regions remain distant from current northern conflict zones
- Previous Tigray war caused minimal disruption to coffee exports
- Export routes through Djibouti currently remain far from fighting
In September, conflict erupted once again in Ethiopia. The conflict, taking place in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray, Afar and Amhara regions, has seen clashes between the government and a seven-group coalition involving the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), reports the Council on Foreign Relations.
It is linked to the Tigray civil war of 2020-2022 between the government in Addis Ababa and the TPLF in Tigray.
It threatens to draw in other countries, including neighbouring Eritrea, whose troops have already entered the conflict. In the Tigray civil war, Eritrea, previously Ethiopia’s adversary, entered the war on the government’s side. Now, however, Ethiopia has accused its neighbour of giving financial backing to the TPLF’s group.
While the scale that the conflict will reach is still uncertain, if it were to spread throughout the country, it could threaten Ethiopia’s globally important coffee trade. How likely is this?
Ethiopia in the global coffee market
Ethiopia, the birthplace of Arabica coffee, accounts for about 4.4% of global coffee production, according to Dutch cooperative bank Rabobank, as well as 7.7% of the world’s Arabica production specifically. According to commodity intelligence platform Expana, around 25-30% of this is consumed locally.
It is Africa’s largest coffee producer, and the fifth largest producer in the world, according to the US Department of Agriculture.
Coffee in Ethiopia is a cornerstone of the national economy, generating significant export earnings and providing millions of farmers with livelihoods, according to the Food and Land Use Coalition (FOLU), a self-governing coalition.
Yet like much of the world’s coffee, it faces challenges such as ageing trees, declining productivity, climate change impacts, pests and diseases, and limited access to finance.
This crop year (2026/27), Expana estimates that Ethiopia will produce 9.5m bags of coffee, of which around 6.7m bags will be exported. To put this in context, global production in the 2026/27 crop year is forecast to reach 193m bags, while consumption is forecast at about 184m bags.
Ethiopia is about 1.1m square kilometres in size, roughly three times the size of Germany. Therefore, the distance between coffee-growing regions and conflict zones is currently significant.
How could conflict affect Ethiopia’s coffee trade?
The original Tigray civil war, which took place between 2020 and 2022, did not affect Ethiopia’s coffee exports, according to data from Expana. Exports for these years were in line with averages seen in the previous years, although exports did grow following the war’s conclusion.
According to the Secretariat of the International Coffee Organisation (ICO), exports even grew during the first two years of the war, before dipping slightly in 2022.
“In general, we saw very limited impact on the export numbers,” says Oliver Broster, senior manager for coffee analysis at Expana. ”Green coffee exports were above the previous five-year average as Ethiopian production continued to grow. Since then production and exports have continued to grow.”
The region where the conflict was most prominently concentrated, Tigray, is at a significant distance from the coffee-producing regions in the south of the country (see map below).
So now that conflict has erupted again, how likely is Ethiopia’s coffee sector to be impacted?
If the war remains in the north around the Tigray region, there is likely to be no impact on coffee production, says Broster. Some effects could be seen if it gets closer to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, although this is difficult to quantify. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, the previous civil war did almost reach Addis Ababa in 2021, with Tigrayan troops getting within 85 miles of the city before being forced back.
If the war does get closer to the capital, says Broster, it may impact the logistics of getting coffee to port, as well as potential disruptions with local storage and processing.
What about exports? Landlocked Ethiopia exports primarily from neighbouring Djibouti, explains Carlos Mera, head of agri commodity market research at Rabobank. This route, he suggests, is likely protected. Conflicts are, however, difficult to predict.
The road and rail from Addis Ababa to Djibouti is currently a long way from potential conflict, says Expana’s Broster.
In short, he says, disruptions to global coffee from the conflict, and prices in particular, are likely to be minimal, if they are seen at all.
The current conflict in Ethiopia is less than a month old. There is little indication as to how long it will last, or the scale that it will reach.
Yet for now, Ethiopia’s sizeable coffee sector looks to be unaffected. Its production regions are far from the front lines, as are export routes. It appears that they will likely remain unimpacted by the conflict.
