Another cup?

The most far-flung of my correspondents tells of difficulties in obtaining a good cup of joe in Accra. Nescafé is king in a coffee producing country like Ghana, which neighbors Cote d’Ivoire, Cameroon, and Equatorial Guinea, BIG coffee producers all of them. But then I also heard that in Uganda, whose export trade largely rests in coffee beans, the laborers picking the pods in the fields often have no clue what the beans are used for.

Nestlé, one of the most low profile multinationals (compared to CocaCola or even Cadbury’s) has a big footprint in Africa. It started making baby formula in Switzerland during the 1850’s, then tinned condensed milk, and branched out into chocolate, coffee and tea. All are products that were useful in tropical and sub-tropical countries without widely available commercial or private refrigeration. Tins of condensed milk were used as exchange currency in some places. During the Spanish Civil War in famished Madrid they were hoarded like gold bars and the whores accepted them as payment for services rendered.

In a coffee obsessed country like Spain, coffee was also traded on the black market, counterfeited, and mislabeled. CAFE stood for “caro, amargo, fuerte y escaso.” i.e., expensive, bitter, strong and scarce. A whole generation grew up drinking brewed roasted malted barley in small cups, and when a restaurant wanted to boast of excellence it advertised that it served “café,café”, emphasizing the real stuff by reassuring repetition.

From mother to daughter the tradition of buying the coffee beans exclusively at certain establishments, affirmed not only status but ideology. In Madrid “La Mexicana” on the calle Preciados was the preferred roaster of the civil service bourgeoisie. Seville’s upper class only drank Saimaza brews. Behind the respectable facade of those firms a network of smuggling, counterfeiting and corrupt import licenses kept the demand satisfied and enriched many.

Spain had a colony in tropical Africa, what is today the Republic of Equatorial Guinea, including the islands of Fernando Pó and Annobon. Coffee of the Robusta variety was extensively farmed and traded, with other forest products, to a captive mainland market. The trade fell as spoils of war to General Franco’s lieutenant, Admiral Carrero Blanco, whose heavy hand closed the Spanish market for coffee to other producers and other varieties like Colombia or the Arabica beans.

Nestlé was no stranger to these practices. In exchange for import licenses for coffee beans it invested in Spain, developing the dairy trade by producing sweetened condensed milk in the Northern provinces, and later by setting up instant coffee producing facilities. When the new brand Nescafé Gold was introduced with great fanfare in the early 1960s young professionals like myself believed that a new kind of delectable, exquisitely distinguished flavor opened up avenues of social mobility.

The swiss-ness of Nestlé has sheltered it from the most of the opprobrium cloaking food multinationals. In spite of its visibility in most countries of the world, few attach labels of exploitation to the name. Worth noting is that this Swiss company relies on its operations outside of Switzerland for 95% of its profits.