Liberia signs $60 million coffee deal to revive industry

A 20-year coffee push with more than US$60 million in promised investment is now Liberia’s biggest bid in years to turn Coffee Liberica from a curiosity into an origin buyers track. The deal, signed in Monrovia by Agriculture Minister Dr. J. Alexander Nuetah and JR Farms founder and group chief executive Olawale Rotimi Oyeyemi, is being sold as a full rebuild of the country’s coffee sector, not just a planting program.

The Ministry of Agriculture said the partnership is meant to expand exports, create jobs and rebuild the value chain through production, processing, farmer training and infrastructure. Its scale is striking: more than 200,000 farmers are expected to benefit, at least 200 million coffee trees are slated for planting over two decades, and officials project more than 300,000 direct and indirect jobs across the coffee economy. The plan also calls for more than 250,000 hectares of coffee plantations, a figure far beyond Liberia’s National Agriculture Development Plan 2024-2030 target of 15,000 hectares of new coffee farms by 2030.

For coffee watchers, the detail that matters is not just the money. Liberia has been positioning Coffee Liberica as a national priority crop, and the government has paired this deal with a broader effort to build a recognizable origin story around it. In December 2025, FAO Director-General QU Dongyu launched FAO’s One Country One Priority Product coffee initiative in Liberia after the country chose Coffee Liberica, a rare indigenous species, as its focus. FAO has said Liberia has about 1.6 million hectares of arable croplands and abundant rainfall, assets officials are now trying to translate into quality, productivity and a stronger market identity.

Nuetah has already laid out the test. In earlier talks with FAO, he said Liberia was working with coffee farmers to promote Liberica, attract investors, reduce post-harvest loss through storage facilities and build capacity for smallholders with new technologies. The new JR Farms agreement folds those ambitions into a larger package tied to FAO’s Hand-in-Hand initiative and the government’s Economic Diplomacy agenda, with climate-resilient, market-oriented agriculture at the center.

The next proof point came quickly. On June 9, the ministry held a Youth and Farmers Engagement Forum in Gbarnga, Bong County, bringing together more than 150 young people from Bong, Nimba and Lofa counties, plus farmers, local authorities, development partners and JR Farms representatives. Officials said the goal was to identify youth for training and local seed multiplication, while opening pathways into agribusiness, mechanization, processing, logistics, marketing, financial services and exports.

That is the real measure of this deal. If Liberia can deliver trained farmers, functioning storage, processing capacity, traceability and a brand that gives Liberica a place on quality-focused roasters’ menus, the country could finally matter in sourcing conversations beyond bulk commodity terms. If not, the headline numbers will remain just that, and the origin revival will stall before it reaches the cup.