Why Africa?

The running legend amongst Ethiopians that commercial outlets have incrementally begun to exploit is that of Kaldi, the Abyssinian shepherd who upon investigating the mysterious exodus of his goat flock found them prancing  daintily around a tree never before discovered. He traced the bizarre activity of his cattle to their consumption of the tree’s fruit.

That is where the tale ends.  Documentation of verifiable statistics related to production, GDP, or export of Ethiopian coffee does not arrive on the scene until the 19th century by the British. But even before that time, it is important to note that in the 16th century Arabs from Yemen imported the product familiar to the Ethiopians 800 years prior for the sake of commercialization.  In fact, you could very well equate Yemen as the modern-day Monsanto in that even then they were able to successfully play the field and selectively breed plants that produced seeds without the capacity to reproduce.

The rest, as they say, is history. As Europe began embarking upon the age of exploration, coffee proponents sought more environments to cultivate the coveted cash crop. Thus, when you analyze the discrepancy between when coffee was discovered by Europeans and its introduction to soil foreign to Africa (Java and Suriname by the Dutch), one can clearly infer that any accreditation to Ethiopians or other mainland-Africans never reached the pubic. In fact, the majority of European coffee houses in the 17th century were modeled after those produced by the Ottomans. Interesting to see that the Arabs, not the Europeans, are primarily responsible for the propagation and commercialization of the globe’s current number two export.
Of course, when we call coffee a number two export, we cannot include Africa in that number, even today. The first African country that appears on the list of countries by coffee export is Ethiopia. There are four European countries that appear on that list even before Ethiopia, which appears as number eleven. Coffee is Ethiopia’s highest export! Does coffee even grow in Europe?

At the end of the day, African coffee just tastes better. Feel free to argue with me about that. But unless you try for yourselves, I cannot consider you qualified to make an experienced decision. Feel free to go to our online store to begin your journey!