With English documentary makers Nick and Marc Francis at the directorial helm, Black Gold, that explores the different facets of the global coffee trade, that originates in Ethiopia (often dubbed the ‘birthplace of coffee’), premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006.
The movie starts with well-documented scenes of the coffee-making process, from the poor Ethiopian coffee growers harvesting the beans, to how they are processed, packed and distributed in the market. The directors, in an effort to contextualise the critical importance of coffee for Ethiopia, included in the narrative the facts that almost 67% of the country’s export revenues come from coffee and a staggering 11 million of the population depend on coffee trade to make their meagre livelihood .
The name ‘Black Gold’ is appropriate, since Ethiopian coffee beans are considered the finest (they have a signature dark brown shade) and of the highest quality. What the documentary attempts to convey is the irony that the people responsible for most of the eighty billion dollars of the world coffee market, are some of the poorest in the world. The storyline pitches the underdog, Tadesse Meskela, the General Manager of the Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union, against the multi-national global coffee retailers who have monopolised the world market.
The story traces the efforts of Meskela, as he travels across the world in an attempt to get a higher price for Ethiopian coffee beans by shortening the supply chain from the farms to the market. He believes that if the middlemen are eliminated entirely and the farmers can sell directly to both other super marts and grocery stores in Europe and the United States, as well as direct consumers themselves, they will be able to earn a higher profit than the negligible 50 cents on average they make today .
As a sub-plot, the documentary also explores and criticises the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the unfair trade terms that the world’s poorer countries receive, often making it impossible for them to compete on a level playing field with the economic giants. Also, the lack of initiatives from WTO in providing protection to the farmers in Ethiopia is cited as a primary reason why they have been continuously exploited by MNCs.
This was also reflected at a WTO meeting that was shown, in which the African trade minsters not only voiced their protest about the unfair trade agreements that were enforced on them as well as their lack of involvement in the entire price negotiation process. From the WTO meet in Mexico, the story shifts back to Ethiopia, where scenes of a famine show that living conditions are expected to become even worse in the coming months. The farmers who have relied almost entirely on coffee to survive, were now forced to shift to ‘chat’, which is a popular, chewable narcotic plants, since this will fetch them a higher price in the world market .
Works Cited
Black Gold. Dir. Nick Francis and Marc Francis. Perf. Tadesse Meskela. 2006. Documentary.
