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Comprised of Tanzania’s most progressive smallholder farmers, the Association of Kilimanjaro Specialty Coffee Growers (KILICAFE) is proud to deliver the finest coffee that Tanzania has to offer. KILICAFE coffees originate in the country’s highland regions around Mt. Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain and in the Mount Livingstone ranges in the southwest, near Lake Nyasa. These coffees benefit from volcanic soils and high altitudes ideally suited to the culti­vation of exceptional mild Arabica coffee. Kent and Bourbon varieties are grown at altitudes between 1,400 and 1,800 metres.

During the 2006 coffee season, KILICAFE achieved gross sales of USD. 3.4million, up from USD. 2.65million in 2005. 30% of KILICAFE’s production is sold directly to international coffee roasters and buyers in the United States, including Starbucks, Peet’s Coffee & Tea, Atlantic Specialty Coffee. Coffee is also sold to the European market companies such as GEPA – Germany, Trabocca - Holland, Tchibo – Germany and List & Beisler - Germany).

In the 2006 season a total of 435 metric tonnes were sold to overseas buyers at an average price of USD. 1.50/lb. 70% of the remaining production is sold to the national coffee auctions run by the Tanzania Coffee Board (TCB). As result, KILICAFE farmers have been rewarded with price premiums for quality of up to 70%. KILICAFE has also been honoured with the Tanzania Coffee Association’s (TCA) annual award for “Best Quality in the Smallholder Category” in 2001, 2003 and 2006, and received the runner-up prize for best Tanzanian coffee at Eastern African Fine Coffees Association’s (EAFCA) annual African Fine Coffee Conference & Exhibition Conference & Exhibition in 2005 and 4 th place in 2007.

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KILICAFE is a farmer-owned company with chapters in Tanzania’s three main Arabica growing regions of Kilimanjaro, Mbinga and Mbeya. The Association currently represents 117 farmer business groups and more than 10,000 smallholder farmers, all committed to producing high quality coffee for the specialty market.

KILICAFE provides a variety of services to enable member farmers to continually improve coffee quality and make coffee a more profitable business for their families and communities. With 75 of its members now processing their coffee through central pulpery units (CPUs), over 50% of KILICAFE production in 2007 should qualify for the specialty market overseas. KILICAFE coffees are Starbucks CAFÉ Practices verified and FLO certified.

Kilimanjaro Coffee:

Arabica coffee grown in the fertile volcanic soils of Mount Kilimanjaro’s foothills carries a distinctive, rich aroma unlike any other in the world. The coffee is shade-grown beneath the snow capped peak of Africa’s highest mountain, where Chagga farmers mix coffee cultivation with banana and other staple food crops on small family plots. Passionately devoted to the mountain, the Chagga have long depended on income earned from coffee sales to educate their children, access medical care and accumulate capital for small businesses.

Southern Highlands Coffees:

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German missionaries introduced Arabica coffee to the region about a century ago and found an immediate demand among Europeans throughout East Africa due to its rich flavour and aroma. Unlike the coffee of Kilimanjaro, Tanzania’s Southern Highlands coffee was relatively unknown in specialty coffee circles due to poor production methods. KILICAFE has taken special efforts to improve these coffees by introducing better processing standards through CPUs and market promotion.

Today, Southern Highlands coffees command even higher market share in the specialty segment than Northern coffees and are sought after for their unique flavour profiles mainly in the American and German markets.

Support from TechnoServe:

TechnoServe, a United States based international NGO has provided strategic management advice to KILICAFE for the last six years. TechnoServe assisted KILICAFE to develop its unique business model and expand it across Tanzania. TechnoServe’s mission is to help entrepreneurial men and women to build businesses that create income, opportunity and economic growth. TechnoServe has been working in Tanzania since 1991.

KILICAFE: BUILDING A NAME FOR TANZANIAN SPECIALTY COFFEE

“We named our group Tujikomboe because it means we must save ourselves.’ And we’ve lived up to that name after joining KILICAFE,” says Elizabeth Nungu, Treasurer of Tujikomboe Kahawa Bora, a farmer business group in Mbinga, Tanzania.

“Our farmers have received the highest payments in the area each year since 2002, the year we joined KILICAFE. This allows us to send our children to school, build better houses, and put something back into our coffee farms.”

Tujikomboe is one of 117 farmer business groups that KILICAFE works with to improve coffee quality, access specialty markets, and benefit from price premiums of up to 70%. In doing so, KILICAFE has played a key role in the Tanzania coffee industry, building a name for specialty coffee from Tanzania and helping more than 10,000 smallholder farmers build confidence in the future. KILICAFE has been receiving advisory support from TechnoServe, an international NGO, since the former’s inception in 2001.

Tujikomboe first learned about the fast growing specialty coffee market and how improving quality could improve farmers’ coffee incomes when a TechnoServe business advisor visited them in 2002. That same year, they joined KILICAFE and began receiving training to improve the quality of their coffee. Eventually, the group was assisted to install and operate a Central Pulpery Unit (CPU) of their own with a loan from Ecologic Finance (now called Root Capital).

Much of the group’s and KILICAFE’s coffee is sold directly to American specialty coffee roasters and European Fair Trade markets. In the last crop season (2006), 23 containers were purchased directly by specialty coffee buyers, making KILICAFE Tanzania’s leading supplier to the specialty market. The result is clearly a win-win situation on both sides: producers receive consistently high prices and consumers receive consistent supplies of high quality coffee. KILICAFE is keen to strengthen its relationship with leading specialty roasters like Starbucks by supporting its farmers to comply with international certification schemes (Starbucks C.A.F.E. Practices and Fair Trade).

	Adolph Kumburu, Executive Director of KILICAFE

KILICAFE, Executive Director, Mr. Adolph Kumburu says, “The benefits of transparency and social responsibility are obvious to farmers, so they are willing to make the investment on their end. Certification is more than a symbol of how far we have come.”

KILICAFE’s focus now is on strengthening delivery of its core services, which are finance and marketing links, CPU supervision and quality control and building partnerships to help farmers tackle low productivity.

“Most people see lack of fertilizers and market information as the first barrier to increasing farmers’ incomes”. With KILICAFE, we first had to create a marketing system that rewards quality. Then we had to get the quality. Only now are the incentives aligned to help farmers boost yields. Growth is important, but it cannot come at the expense of quality. Our message to farmers is still the same: quality, quality, quality,” Mr. Kumburu affirms.