Would you enjoy your morning cup as much if you knew the coffee farmer who toiled to get the beans ready ended up being short changed? You may spend $20 on a bag of coffee beans, but coffee growers may receive as little as three cents which is not enough to provide a better livelihood to their families. The majority of coffee consumption happens in industrialized nations.
90% of coffee exports come from developing countries like Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and others. Sadly, only a small fraction- as low as 1%– of the retail price reaches the hands of coffee farmers.
Founder and second generation coffee farmer Mukurima Muiruki witnessed first hand the exploitation of farmers by brokers and middlemen whose only goal is to profit, disregarding the farmers interest to provide a better life for their families. He believes that correcting historically ingrained patterns of racial imbalance has a financial solution - provide customers an ability to donate directly to coffee farmers.
Don’t pay it forward, pay it Black.
Instead of trying to compete on volume and market share, African countries have necessarily focussed on becoming producers of premium and speciality coffee, growing mostly fine Arabica coffees – a highly valued grade of coffee beans regarded as being of superior taste profile to Robusta coffee. The environment, cultivation process, and processing of speciality coffee produces unique and interesting flavour profiles, which are desired by consumers, and subsequently command higher premiums within the coffee market.
In 2016, Kenya produced 49, 980 metric tons of coffee. This placed it at position 16 of world producers. At the top of the apex was Brazil with almost 50 times more coffee output than Kenya at 2.6 million tons. Ethiopia remains Africa’s top producer with 384,000 metric tons while Uganda follows with 288,000 metric tons. Uganda is a net exporter of Robusta, a lesser-preferred variety than Kenya’s Arabica.