A rampaging AIDS epidemic will further slow coffee production in Africa, where many governments see the disease as their biggest development challenge, Zambia's leader said on Saturday. President Levy Mwanawasa told an international coffee conference more cash was required to combat the disease and help a growing number of farmers too ill to cultivate coffee or subsistence crops like maize and beans. Some 25 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are already living with HIV/AIDS, 70 percent of the total number worldwide. The virus affects around 5 percent of the adult population.
