Adam Smith (1723–1790) never visited Ethiopia. The closest he got to Africa was Toulouse in southern France, where he spent eighteen months of boredom serving as a tutor for a young member of the nobility – boredom that was partially alleviated when he spent his spare time working on a manuscript that was in time to become An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. But were he to visit Ethiopia today, he would see much that validates theories he set forth in Wealth of Nations, a ground-breaking work published in 1776, the same year the U.S. Declaration of Independence was signed. Smith envisioned a nation of small shopkeepers and producers with prices determined by the laws of supply and demand in a competitive market economy. The coffee trade in Ethiopia approximates the world that Smith envisioned with 95 percent of Ethiopian coffee produced by small farmers.

Coffee was cultivated in Ethiopia as early as 600 AD, first as a medicine, then as a beverage. The beverage made from the roasted beans was introduced from Arabia to Turkey in 1554, from Turkey to Italy in 1615, and then to other European countries. In 1727, coffee reached Brazil, which is now the world’s largest producer, in 1727.