Ethiopian startup WAGA is preparing to harness the country’s extensive agricultural potential by piloting a blockchain-powered platform for the coffee supply chain. This initiative is expected to commence by mid-2025, with the aim of enhancing transparency, reducing dependency on intermediaries, and providing financial empowerment to farmers.
WAGA was conceptualized by co-founders Emanuel Acho (PhD) and Hana Terefe during their internship at Nethermind, a blockchain research and software engineering firm based in London. Initially, Uganda was considered as a potential launch destination, but the vast opportunities present in Ethiopia’s coffee sector ultimately led to a shift in focus. One of the co-founders, who entered the cryptocurrency space just three years ago, recognized the technology’s potential to revolutionize industries and believed that Ethiopia, as one of the largest coffee producers globally, was an ideal starting point.
Addressing Systemic Challenges in the Coffee Sector
Ethiopia’s coffee industry, which accounts for nearly one-third of the country’s export revenue, is predominantly driven by smallholder farmers who cultivate less than half a hectare of land. Despite the crop’s economic significance, these farmers receive only a small fraction of the final retail price due to inefficiencies such as opaque pricing, delayed payments, and a reliance on intermediaries. WAGA aims to introduce a decentralized model that streamlines trade and enhances financial inclusion through blockchain technology.
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The founders believe that the influx of Bitcoin mining operations, forthcoming cryptocurrency regulations, and the growing adoption of blockchain-based solutions further validate their vision. However, demonstrating the platform’s value to both regulators and key supply chain participants remains an essential step toward full-scale adoption.
Tokenization and Decentralized Finance for Coffee Farmers
At the heart of WAGA’s initiative is the concept of tokenizing coffee, allowing every stage of the supply chain to be digitally recorded. By issuing digital tokens representing coffee batches on the Ethereum blockchain, the entire journey from farm to consumer becomes verifiable. Farmers maintain ownership of these tokens, which removes the need for physical storage while protecting them from price fluctuations at the point of sale.
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Each coffee batch is assigned a token on Ethereum, with essential metadata—including origin, certifications, and processing details—securely stored on IPFS, a decentralized storage network. To ensure credibility, Chainlink oracles verify the existence of coffee reserves and track real-time market prices, keeping the tokens anchored to actual assets.
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Through smart contracts, farmers can directly sell these tokens to global buyers, with payments processed automatically upon delivery verification. The founders estimate that this approach can lower transaction fees by up to 70% while eliminating delays in payment settlements.
Beyond trade facilitation, WAGA plans to integrate decentralized finance (DeFi) solutions, allowing farmers to use tokenized coffee as collateral for loans on blockchain-based lending platforms. This would provide much-needed liquidity to smallholder farmers, many of whom lack access to traditional banking services.
Roadmap and Future Prospects
WAGA utilizes the ERC-1155 token standard on Ethereum, enabling seamless creation and transfer of multiple asset types—including both fungible and non-fungible tokens—within a single transaction. The company’s development roadmap includes a testnet deployment by mid-2025, providing an opportunity to refine platform functionalities in a controlled environment before launching on the mainnet. This phase will serve as a crucial step in evaluating whether decentralized technologies can drive systemic improvements in the global coffee trade.
The startup envisions a future where its tokenized coffee model offers a reliable means of asset-backed trade, ensuring that the value of its tokens remains intrinsically linked to physical coffee reserves. As WAGA moves forward with its blockchain-driven initiative, its success could serve as a blueprint for other agricultural supply chains looking to leverage decentralized technology for greater efficiency and financial inclusion.
Acho believes that by anchoring it to real-world coffee supplies and using blockchain to track every step of production, WAGA ensures transparency and stability.
