> The powers that be absolutely will not allow countries like Ethiopia to process the coffee they grow any more than they will allow Ivory Coast to process cash

> The powers that be absolutely will not allow countries like Ethiopia to process the coffee they grow any more than they will allow Ivory Coast to process cashews. While there are still remnants of colonialism at play, in theory capitalism would prefer to do processing as near to production as possible... but that's hard to do in Ethiopia or most other African countries with a really unreliable electricity grid [1]. Ivory Coast has it different - they massively built out power generation [2], but it takes time and money for investments into processing facilities flow in. Additionally, political stability is one of the largest issues impeding many African countries. Many of them are actively at war, undergo civil war or separatist movements, are governed by dictators or went through prolonged periods of instability. All of this isn't exactly helpful when looking for investors that have to invest millions of dollars up-front - investors want the guarantee that there won't be some government nationalizing away their investment or war destroying it. [1] https://www.sinalda.com/world-voltages/africa/voltage-ethiopia/ https://www.sinalda.com/world-voltages/africa/voltage-ethiop... [2] https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2020/07/23/the-secret-to-cote-divoires-electric-success https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2020/07/23/the-sec...