“I found that creative platforms have no business model for their sustainability. Quite often we see that a lot of these once glorious platforms that start out well, do not last because they were dependent on the efforts of an individual or small group of persons.”
“A business model for the creative economy identifies who the stakeholders are, which makes their engagement possible. Next, it determines our market, which further determines our market strategy, and then, finding the unique proposition we are offering. There is also room for additions to the model,” he said.Currently, Tigray coffee sources its coffee beans via agents who act as middlemen with smallholder farmers in Gembe, Taraba State.
“Often times, we do not think of development in terms of social impact. We think of it as purely economic. We don’t want to disrupt the smallholder farmers. We don’t want to buy all their land and have 100,000-acre farm. We want to work with them in a way that produce the best quality of coffee beans and still maintain their independence. So, we intend to work with community to see how we will upgrade these schools, motivate the teachers, provide schools for them.
“We want coffee to be as Nigerian as Fela, adire and the talking drums. We intend to have cafés all over the place the same way we have fast-food places but with a certain quality. We don’t think coffee is an elitist thing. It is aspirational and cultured but we want to de-elitistize it in a way that it is accessible to those who would otherwise be excluded by the high prices and café locations.