This morning, and probably against my better judgement, I decided to follow the debates surrounding the recent tanking of cocoa farm gate prices in Ghana. As expected it was again, almost all about the crippling, debilitating, partisan, binary, zero-sum-game: whodunnit and ‘who-do-we-hail-or-threaten-to-jail-for-what-we-don’t-even-know-yet’. Damp squib! Do these people even talk to each other?
END OF STORY?
So I went to my two favourite AI tools to have separate debates with the machines. I played one’s arguments against the other, in the hope that they aren’t communicating with themselves behind my back.
I put to them, my long-held theory: Ghana must absolutely learn from what I consider the Ethiopian arabica coffee model, by which their coffee commands high prices not only due to quality and specialty demand, but also to strong local consumption (there are 150 million Ethiopians and an estimated 90% of adults there who regularly drink coffee), which strengthens its market position and pricing power.
The machines and I have been arguing back and forth. Politely. They have even learned from me, and preface what they send to me with the very Ghanaian opening, ‘please.’ But we finally agreed on the following things that Ghana could do, learning from the Ethiopian experience:
