Being part of cash crops, coffee is important for smallholder farmers in many producing countries because of its potential to create revenues. Nevertheless, coffee production can fluctuate in these countries and income inequality can be significant between actors of the value chains (VCs). In order to reach an image of the contribution to growth and inclusiveness of a VC, it is needed to study the organisational and institutional processes in which it is involved. The income and jobs created by the coffee activities and their distribution along the VC depend over the governance mechanisms which are largely shaped by the strategies of the actors inside the VC as well as the country's own context and the international environment. To establish some pathways between the mode of governance and the economic and inclusiveness performances, we propose a cross-cutting analysis across the four countries where the VCA4D coffee studies were performed between 2017 and 2022: Honduras, Ecuador, Tanzania and Angola. Our paper aims at highlighting how differently the actors are involved in the governance of the coffee VCs and how they benefit from the coffee VC activities in these four countries. The main results show that the countries which have set a mode of governance shared between public and private actors (Honduras, Tanzania), including the participation of producers in the definition and implementation of a national coffee sector development strategy, are performing better than those who struggle to do so (Ecuador) or those who have shifted from a strong intervention of the State to a regulation totally delivered to the market forces (Angola).