21/07/2026
Africa had its best coffee year last year and the numbers prove it before anything else. 1.18 million tonnes left the continent in 2025 and that translated to roughly $6 billion in export revenue. Uganda led with $2.4 billion from 8.4 million bags. Ethiopia followed with 442,000 tonnes. Rwanda nearly doubled to $148.6 million. Kenya pulled in about $350 million in just nine months. It was the first time Africa’s volume and value moved up together, and it wasn’t by accident.
The process starts on the farm, not in a boardroom. Across Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Rwanda, over 800,000 smallholders picked cherry between June and December. The cherry was pulped within hours, fermented for 12 to 36 hours in tanks at cooperative washing stations, then washed and moved to raised drying beds. It took 10 to 20 days of sun to hit 10 to 12 percent moisture. That parchment was then collected, trucked to central mills for hulling, density sorting and grading. From AA and AB in Kenya to Grade 1 in Ethiopia, the beans were bagged in 60kg jute and delivered to warehouses in Nairobi, Addis, Kampala and Kigali.
From there the business splits two ways. About 70 percent moved through cooperatives and their unions to the Nairobi Coffee Exchange and other auction systems, where 15 licensed brokers handled bids from global buyers. The other 30 percent went direct, mostly specialty lots sold on contract to roasters in Europe, the US and increasingly the Middle East. Prices were up in 2025 because supply was good and buyers were paying for traceability. Governments also helped by pushing 20 million new seedlings and training extension officers in every ward, part of the push to get to 150,000 tonnes by 2029.
The money finally moved faster too. Cooperatives that used to pay farmers six months late cleared accounts in weeks. That meant farmers could buy fertilizer, hire pickers, and prune properly for the next cycle. But the gap is still there. A farmer gets about 25 percent of the final export dollar. We still export 95 percent as green and let someone else capture the roast margin.
2025 showed what happens when the process works end to end. Better agronomy, working mills, faster payments, and buyers who care about origin. The next step is to keep more of that $6 billion on the continent. Mill here. Roast here. Package here. Because the best coffee year we’ve had should not be the peak. It should be the baseline.