According to meteorological reports, the El Niño phenomenon that formed last year is expected to end in April this year, but it will not truly weaken until June-July, so it is still affecting multiple coffee-producing countries.

According to the United Nations International Organization for Migration, countries in East Africa such as Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Tanzania have been affected by floods, with Kenya and Tanzania being the hardest hit this time.

Since mid-March this year, Kenya has experienced multiple rounds of heavy rainfall, triggering disasters such as floods and landslides, and the rainy weather is expected to continue throughout May. According to data from the Kenyan Ministry of Interior, at least 289 people have died and over 280,000 have been displaced so far. Some infrastructure such as roads and houses has been damaged, and local agricultural production has also been severely impacted.

Due to this year’s rainfall far exceeding the average for the same period in previous years, the sudden surge in precipitation caused rivers to burst their banks, landslides, and flooded vast areas of farmland, sweeping away tens of thousands of livestock,with local farmers and herders suffering severe losses.Local officials have reported that the economic losses caused by the floods amount to as much as 8 million US dollars.

And in Kenya, most producers are smallholder farmers, who have been more severely affected — some crops were completely lost, and land was flooded. Crops such as coffee beans and tomatoes cannot grow in the flooded water and all rotted away.

To recover as quickly as possible, the Kenyan government launched an emergency relief fund at the end of April, allocating 4 billion Kenyan shillings to flood-affected areas. In addition, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, and the Absa Group will provide up to $60 million in commodity trade finance facilities to Volcafe, one of the world’s largest coffee traders, to strengthen Volcafe’s operations in East Africa and support tens of thousands of coffee farmers in the region.

The financing will provide working capital to facilitate Volcafe’s purchase of coffee cherries from smallholder farmers or local traders, as well as increase support for processing, storage, transportation, and other assistance. It will also support training on sustainable production techniques and good agronomic practices through the long-running Volcafe Way program, aiming to improve the resilience and profitability of coffee crops.