After two years of online gatherings, the World Coffee Producers Forum (WCPF) is returning to an in-person format for 2023, with the event scheduled for Feb. 13-14 at the Kigali Convention Center in Kigali, Rwanda.
This will be the third in-person iteration of the event, which is focused on critical issues affecting coffee producers, such as sustainability, climate change, issues of prices, environment and prosperity.
“The dialogue continues evolving towards the need of a more comprehensive approach beyond the issue of prices,” the WCPF, which was established as a nonprofit entity in 2018, said in a preview of the Rwanda event.
It is necessary for the whole value chain to work together to create the necessary conditions or structure for farmers’ prosperity, because currently, these conditions are not enough for producers to achieve a living income.”
The Rwanda event will follow the inaugural in-person WCPF in Medellín, Colombia, in 2017, which featured former United States President Bill Clinton and renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs.
The current roster of speakers for the event in Kigali includes: Juan Esteban Orduz, WCPF Chairperson, World’s renown Economics and author Jeffrey Sachs, Claude Bizimana, CEO of the National Agricultural Export Development Board NAEB of Rwanda and Gerardine Mukeshimana, Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources of Rwanda
The World Coffee Producers Forum typically gathers wide media coverage and international attention, as well as visits of hundreds of participants from around the world.
For example, the first Forum held in Medellín, Colombia in 2017, brought together over 1,400 producers, industry representatives, government officials, multilateral agencies, and nonprofits hailing from more than 40 coffee-producing countries.
The second Forum held in Campinas, Brazil in 2019, gathered over 1,500 equally diverse and wide-reaching attendees.
