Starbucks [SBUX] has a voracious need for high-quality arabica beans (as opposed to the cheaper robusta beans traditionally favored by your traditional grocery packager of big red cans of coffee). Its ever-expanding business model requires it to take the lead in ensuring steady growth in economically-viable coffee-growers throughout the developing world.

The Daily Monitor of Addis Ababa reports (Via allAfrica.com ) that Starbucks is set to triple the amount of coffee beans it buys from African countries beginning with 2007's growing season. SBUX currently buys just 5% of its beans from the four coffee-producing African nations: Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania. The company pledges to pay better than "conventional markets" for the beans -- provided,  the article notes, that the "prices and conditions coffee beans are traded with at each level of the transactions" are transparent.

This is in keeping with the Coffee Farmers and Equity (CAFE) program that Starbucks itself created to  "evaluate, recognize, and reward producers of high-quality sustainably grown coffee" with Scientific Certification Systems (SCS) an independent evaluation and certification firm.