Black Gold (2006 film)

Black Gold
Directed by	Marc Francis, Nick Francis
Produced by	Christopher Hird, Marc Francis, Nick Francis
Written by	Marc Francis, Nick Francis
Starring	Tadesse Meskela
Music by	Andreas Kapsalis
Edited by	Hugh Williams
Production company	Speakit Films
Release date	2006 (USA)
Running time	78 min.
Language	Amharic, Oromiffa and English with English subtitles
Budget	760,000 USD

Black Gold is a 2006 feature-length documentary film. The story follows the efforts of an Ethiopian Coffee Union manager as he travels the world to obtain a better price for his workers' coffee beans.

The film is directed and produced by Marc Francis and Nick Francis from Speakit Films, and co-produced by Christopher Hird. It premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.

The film focuses on the coffee growers of the Oromia Region of southern and western Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee. It follows Tadesse Meskela, the General Manager of the Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union, as he visits coffee-growing regions in Sidamo and Oromia (including the Kilenso Mokonisa Cooperative in the Bule Hora woreda in the Borena Zone of the Oromia Region), as well as a coffee processing center, a coffee auction house, and his union's headquarters in Addis Ababa. He also travels to England and the United States in an effort to promote Ethiopian coffee by eliminating the numerous middlemen. There is also a scene where coffee farmers pray to God for a higher price, which was filmed at the Negele Gorbitu Cooperative, located near Irgachefe in the Abaya woreda of the Borena Zone. The Ethiopian coffee farmers speak about their lives, with one explaining that he is cutting down his coffee plants and planting khat (a plant containing cathinone, an amphetamine-like stimulant) instead, due to the low price he is getting for coffee because of the explosion in the number of coffee farmers across the globe, and the comparatively higher price he can get for khat.