This is an introduction to the pilot project launched by Ambrosus Project Manager Dr Joseph Wang in collaboration with Wageni Technologies in Kenya and Tanzania, Bitquant Research Laboratories (Asia) Ltd in Hong Kong, and a coffee distributor and roaster located in Hong Kong. We are creating a completely new supply chain which allows small farmers in Africa to export their coffee to Asia and verify their quality via Ambrosus blockchain. Ambrosus smart-contract powered marketplace permits buying quality-assured coffee in small batches and connecting small farmers in various distant areas with big markets. The aim of this pilot project will be to prove that Ambrosus opens new commercial opportunities for coffee producers in Africa for trade with a significant market — China.

The introduction to the project is done through a series of questions and answers:

What is the goal of this pilot project?

The goal for this project is to use Ambrosus to improve communications between the different stakeholders involved in growing, processing and distributing coffee in order to improve the quality of the product and to create opportunities for quality-conscious farmers to make more money. Right now the problem is that if you drink a cup of coffee and it is particularly good or particularly bad, there is no way that you can inform all of the people involved in growing the coffee about the final product, and no way of tracing who was responsible for making the coffee good or bad. Solving this problem is all part of the “one belt, one road” initiative to increase trade between Africa and China. As African farmers get more income, they will be interested in buying manufactured goods from Mainland China and also investing their new money into the region via Hong Kong. Ambrosus intends to be the conduit to these flows of goods between the two megaregions and boost cross-continental trade.

What are the problems nowadays?

The current situation with coffee is that the coffee drinker and the coffee producer are disconnected from each other, and there are no good mechanisms for allowing communications between various parts of the supply chain. When you drink a cup of coffee, you don’t know exactly where and who picked the coffee that you produced, and in fact no one knows. One unfortunate part of this is that the farmer doesn’t know about some of the ways they can boost their income. For example, most of the coffee that is grown in Tanzania is grown organically and according to ethical trading principles. However, the farmers simply do not know about the certification programs, and they are not keeping the records and documentation that are needed for these programs. In addition, the farmers are currently just throwing away the coffee husks which could be sold and turned into cascia tea. One thing that is important to note is that this is not a zero-sum game, and we are trying not just to increase income to the farmer, but to increase income to everyone involved in processing and distributing coffee, whereas consumer will be drinking better coffee.

How can Ambrosus ecosystem solve these issues?

Much of the issue in coffee is to be about documenting the transfer of the coffee and the circumstances under which the coffee was grown and who handled the coffee. The items that need to be loaded up into blockchain are documents such as supply contracts, export licenses, transfer documents, and other information that describes the source of the coffee. In addition, there are many other documents such as pictures, GPS logs, delivery records, which are all necessary to trace the custody of the coffee. The Ambrosus Blockchain is important since it allows these records to be recorded onto a system, and allows disclosure on a “need to know” basis. Amber serves as the node linking this data to the objects it is tracing. The technology is blockchain software combined with GPS sensors and webcams. The challenge is to make the technology usable to all of the participants on the supply chain. We are currently working with a coffee supplier in Tanzania and a coffee distributor in Hong Kong who are testing out Ambrosus ecosystem.

Who are the participating actors and what are the next steps?

This is an existing business, and everyone wants to get a system up and running as quickly as possible. We intent to set up a system to register supply chain documents onto the blockchain by the beginning of December 2017 and to have adoption amongst coffee producers by the end of the year. The companies involved involved in the coffee project are Wageni Technologies in Kenya and Tanzania, Bitquant Research Laboratories (Asia) Limited in Hong Kong, and a coffee distributor and roaster located in Hong Kong.

The first step in implementation will be to create an easy to use system by which documents and media involved in moving coffee are registered onto the blockchain in a verifiable manner. The coffee supply chain requires large numbers of documents such as contracts, invoices, bills of lading, export licenses, evidence of payments. In addition, the coffee supply chain could be improved by generating media files such as pictures of how the coffee was stored and grown, and the people involved in coffee handling.

In setting up the coffee supply chain, we have run into a number of interesting and unexpected situations in which blockchain would be useful. There is no

current way of recording information about a particular photo to ensurethat the photo was in fact associated with a particular batch of coffee. All of this information can be recorded and stored using blockchain and distributed storage.

Our immediate priority is to develop an easy mechanism by which documents related to our coffee supply chain can be verified using blockchain and stored in a manner that both can makes the data available for people who need to know about the processing of the coffee while at the same time protecting private and commercially sensitive information. We intend to have a working alpha in use by the end of the year.