The Tom Hunter Foundation has been working on a project with a 20,000-strong co-op that aims to cut out up to 15 ‘margin takers’ who globally make billions from the sale of coffee while African farmers are forced to accept lower prices for their beans and in many cases are driven out of business.

If successful, the initiative will be extended to Malawi – the foundation’s other partner nation in Africa – and will include tea growers also. Ewan Hunter, the foundation’s chief executive, told Holyrood that if sales to Europe were successful they hoped to enter the US market.

Coffee is the most valuable commodity after oil. Over the last ten years, global retail sales have grown from $30bn annually to nearly £80bn but the amount earned by farmers has fallen from around $10bn to $5.5bn. In real terms, the price growers are being paid is the equivalent of what they received 100 years ago.

Two billion cups are consumed a day, 400 million of those in the US. Four multinational corporations dominate the world market, with the international price determined in New York and London.

The brand name of the Rwandan co-op’s coffee and more details of the foundation’s project are due to be made public in June. “This could be transformational,” said Hunter. “For every farmer, you are looking at a household of around six so this initiative with one co-op could alone benefit 120,000 people.”

Last week, Hunter gave evidence to the Scottish Parliament’s External Relations Committee which is carrying out an inquiry into international development. He said that the overseas work of the foundation, founded by the billionaire entrepreneur Sir Tom Hunter and his wife Marion, focused on helping to build sustainable health, education and trade systems in the two African nations.

On trade, Hunter said it concentrated on “import substitution and export enablement”. According to the Blair Commission on Africa, the continent’s share of world trade is about 2 per cent; if it were to increase that by just 1 per cent it would generate additional export revenue of $70 billion a year, three times the amount that sub-Saharan Africa receives in aid.