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Imperialism pop quiz

Let's say that the global coffee industry generates $460 billion in revenue in a year.

  1. How much of it goes to Africa (the whole continent)?
  2. How much of it goes to Starbucks?
answer

I found this transcription of a talk between Russian and Ugandan delegations. The Ugandan president, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, says that:

the global business for coffee is worth $460 billion. [...] But of those $460 billion the coffee producing countries of the whole world share only $25 billion and Africa shares only $2.4 billion out of $460 billion. [...] Germany earns more from coffee than the whole of Africa. Germany earns $6.85 billion from coffee [...]

I am not sure how I can verify these claims. I found the coffee industry stats on Statista but their graphs vs. the text summaries show different numbers:

Whichever numbers are correct the bigger picture remains the same.

Starbucks revenue for the twelve months ending June 30, 2023 was $35.016B, a 9.48% increase year-over-year.

5
5 comments

  • I'll have a think about how to research this. If I don't come up with anything, I'll just say that one thing to watch out for is dodgy accounting.

    Africa might not get revenue made in Africa. It might just be on the books as African revenue for a multinational to avoid paying higher western taxes for that portion of the supply chain. Or it might be that so much of African coffee sales are used to pay off IMF loans that can be traced back essentially to western coffee multinational shareholders. This will distort the final picture.

    Museveni might be working with certain assumptions that produce a certain figure that western sources will never lead to (because they're working with conflicting assumptions). (It's like when CEOs say that a worker pay rise will bankrupt the company because they've already counted two avoidable things as operational costs: the CEO's unreasonable pay rise and loan repayments made to a company owned by the CEO or other shareholders to avoid paying tax on senior wages or dividends.)

    • I don't think that will change the final picture in any meaningful way. The reason is that coffee beans are minimally processed before being sold. The buyers there, whether they are corporations or small cafes etc, "add value" to these beans through roasting, grinding, preparing beverages, attaching their brand etc. (I put "add value" in quotes to imply that value isn't added but because it is the technical term.) Global south coffee producing nations don't have much bargaining power because of which the difference between the price at which they sell the beans compared to the aforementioned added value comes out to be a bit absurd. For an idea you can compare the price difference between making coffee yourself from bought ground beans and compare it to the price of coffee at Starbucks. It is even more than that Starbucks probably has deals with coffee plantations to buy beans in bulk for cheaper.

      It is a common way of extracting wealth from global south nation which ends up sedimenting in the imperial core. I ran into this coffee statistic while reading this article where they say:

      Canada is a third-party supporter of a European Union-led suit against Indonesia at the World Trade Organization (WTO). They challenged Jakarta’s restriction on exports of unprocessed nickel and bauxite. Indonesia is appealing a WTO ruling that found its measures to be inconsistent with the body’s prohibition of export restrictions and bans.

      Irrespective of WTO rules, the world’s largest nickel producer has generated huge benefits from the move. In short order the value-added benefits Indonesia garnered from the commodity rose 20-fold from US$1.1 billion to $20.8 billion.

      So it's the same phenomenon here with nickel and bauxite.

  • I guessed

    1. $1 billion
    2. $459 billion

    I checked the answer and I was really close.

    1. barely any
    2. a lot