Coffee from Malawi
Malawi is a landlocked East-African country that, like other neighbouring origins, sits astride the East African rift. With lower elevations than neighbours like Tanzania and resulting higher incidence of coffee diseases, Malawi is very much an emerging origin rarely seen on trade lists in the UK. It produces only around 2000 tons of green coffee per annum, a very small amount of which is specialty grade- but this small proportion is generating a lot of buzz.
Malawi
While coffee was introduced to Malawi under British rule in the 1890s, it was only after independence that this crop was able to flourish, having been unable to gain prominence alongside more valuable cash crops like lucrative tobacco, nuts, tea and spices until the creation of organised co-operatives.
The coffee industry in Malawi today is a legacy of this history, with a split of large estates and small holder farmers processing and exporting as co-operatives. Smallholder farmers are key to the development of specialty coffee in the country, but the infrastructural challenges of being a mountainous, landlocked country with underdeveloped transport means the supply chain can prove challenging.
The specialty coffee emerging from Malawi has great potential, and there's a constant shift towards better processing and quality control.
