Zimbabwe

In 1961, a handful of far-sighted growers formed the Coffee Growers Association. In 1972, the government was asked to invest in a processing mill for coffee. In return the Grain Marketing Board (GMB), which fell under the governments Agriculture Marketing Authority, gained full responsibility for financing, processing, marketing and exports. Coffee at this time became a government controlled product. During this period, and while suffering from trade sanctions (later lifted in 1980 after independence), the main (official) exports remained to Southern Africa until about 1981. Some of the crop mysteriously found its way into other foreign warehouses. 
During this period, the somewhat arcane "Codes" were established for all coffees, which would later prove to be a rather distinguishing but unpractical marketing tool. This 20 year period was the adolescence of Zimbabwe coffee as we know it.

After gaining its independence and the lifting of trade sanctions, Zimbabwe became a member of ICO and was allocated an export quota like other member producing countries. This led to the decision of the GMB to no longer exclusively market their coffee through closed channels.
Sales of coffee for the most part were then organised through weekly open tenders. The GMB would telex buyers around the world offering coffees which had to be bid upon within a certain time frame. In essence, this was a relaxed auction system with no assurances to any buyer of continuous supply. The system did, however, provide an "open book" approach to marketing which was seen as important to the government agency. The limitations of this system and the its ineffectiveness to properly market Zimbabwe's coffee quickly became apparent, and by 1992 the growers increasing frustrations reached a critical point. To their credit, the GMB realised that marketing and financing of such a specialised commodity would be better handled by "Coffee People", but limitations of existing legislature made it difficult to for these changes to take place. Eventually by 1993, through the governments commitment to decentralisation of the agricultural sector, the coffee growers were finally enabled to take control of their crop and the tender system vanished. The era of pro-active marketing was born, and each coffee grower and farmer was now free to market their coffee in any way they saw fit. 

In Zimbabwe today there are approximately 9.500 hectares devoted to coffee, 130 registered commercial farmers, as well as 1600 smallholder farms. The majority of the crop (80%) is grown in the Chipinge district at an altitude of 1.200 meters. The majority of growers grow the SL28 variety as well as small amounts of Caturra. The national average yield is around two metric tons per hectare, although some commercial farmers attain significantly higher yields of 4 to 6 tons per hectare.