production is approximately 30,000 tons. Nationally the country produces 200,000 tons a year, of which almost half is for domestic consumption, the highest in Africa.

Some 12 million people are dependent on Ethiopia s coffee industry, managed by the Ethiopian Coffee Export Enterprise ECEE formerly the Ethiopian Coffee Marketing Corporation. An independent, profit-making organization, ECEE trades on the open market and controls about 50 per cent of the market following liberalization.

ECEE processes its coffee at five plants in Addis-Ababa with a total capacity of almost 500 tons a day and a plant in Dire Dawa. The organization is also building a new 250-ton a day processing plant for washed coffee.

ECEEs key markets are Germany, Japan, USA, France and the Middle East and is focusing on the US specialty marketdestroyed. The best Ethiopian coffee may be compared with the finest coffee in the world, and premium washed arabica beans fetch high prices on the world market. No visit to Ethiopia , is complete without participating in the elaborate coffee ceremony that is Ethiopia ,s traditional form of hospitality. Invariably conducted by a beautiful young girl in traditional Ethiopian costume, the ceremonial apparatus is arranged upon a bed of long grasses. The green beans are roasted in a pan over a charcoal brazier, the rich aroma of coffee mingling with the heady smell of incense that is always burned during the ceremony. The beans are then pounded with a pestle and mortar, and the ground coffee then brewed in a black pot with a narrow spout.

Traditional accompaniments are