Education | Kilimanjaro Specialty Coffees

The Bitter Truth Behind Coffee Festivals

6/26/2025

We've attended coffee festivals on four continents, and no matter the location, the experience is often the same: a celebration of competitions, machines, and coffee culture that feels very disconnected from those who grow the beans. The industry loves to talk about "origin," but at these festivals, origin is reduced to a booth in the least coveted corner of the fair that no one ever visits.

Rather than levelling the playing field, coffee festivals tend to reinforce the industry's most damaging imbalance: those at the top of the supply chain are the protagonists, while those at the bottom are marginalised or completely ignored. We constantly see roasters, baristas, and influencers posting endless selfies, but never the producers themselves. What's missing is not just representation, but respect. Festivals rarely invest in bringing coffee farmers in, offering translation services, or creating spaces for real dialogue about challenges at origin.

The Impact of the EU Deforestation Regulation on the Global Coffee Trade

6/6/2025

The European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) is reshaping the global coffee trade. Enacted to reduce the EU's contribution to global deforestation, this regulation requires that raw materials entering or leaving the EU market be deforestation-free, meaning they cannot come from lands that were deforested after December 31, 2020. However, the regulation's stringent requirements, including detailed traceability and geolocation, are posing significant technological challenges for developing countries, where smallholder farmers dominate production.

Many smallholder farmers lack the necessary technological infrastructure and resources to comply with the EU's traceability requirements. In some coffee-producing areas in Ethiopia and Burundi, for example, there is little to no internet access, putting them at risk of exclusion from one of the world's largest markets. Additionally, importers are stockpiling coffee to avoid disruptions, which could drive up prices and overwhelm global supply chains as the regulation approaches full implementation in December 2025.

MEET THE PRODUCER: RWANDA GASHARU

9/20/2024

Gasharu Coffee is a specialty coffee producer located in Southern Rwanda. It has gained a reputation in the specialty coffee world for its high-quality beans and commitment to sustainability and community development.

History and Background
Gasharu Coffee is a family-owned business that has been growing coffee for generations. The Gasharu region, located in the Western Province of Rwanda near Lake Kivu, is ideal for coffee cultivation due to its rich volcanic soil, high altitudes, and favourable climate. The family behind Gasharu Coffee has taken advantage of these natural advantages to produce some of Rwanda's finest specialty coffees.

BURUNDI: INTERVIEW WITH A COFFEE FARMER

8/10/2023

Burundi is an ideal country for the production of high-quality Arabica coffee, which could generate a solid and recurring income for thousands of farming families. An average altitude of between 1,500 and 2,000 metres, abundant rainfall and a tropical savannah biome combine to create exceptional growing conditions, with coffee accounting for 80 per cent of the country's exports.

Despite this, the Burundian coffee sector faces many challenges. Poor soil health and inadequate maintenance of coffee trees result in low and irregular yields. Production is also threatened by climate change, which increases the frequency of both droughts and heavy rains, resulting in increased soil erosion. Meanwhile, poor processing practices reduce the quality and price of much of Burundi's coffee, and the country's cumbersome business and political environment makes it less attractive to global exporters.

Why are coffee certifications obsolete?

9/29/2022

For the specialty coffee industry, certifications are like the second wave of coffee, they are out of fashion! They no longer serve their purpose, and this is because the needs of consumers have changed and have become more diverse and complex. What specialty coffee lover wants to drink a bitter coffee at Starbucks, when they can just as easily have a fruity Kenya lightly roasted at an independent coffee shop?

This phenomenon also occurs at the farm level. For example, the coffee farmer no longer wants the 0.2 USD/LB that Fair Trade offers him, but instead wants a direct and ethical trade with the importer of microlots who will pay him 4 USD/LB or more. Paying for the inspection of organic coffees has also lost its meaning, with climate change there are cultivation areas where it does not rain for months/years, and the coffee grower must use chemical fertilizers, otherwise they lose the harvest.

IS ORGANIC COFFEE ON A LARGE SCALE POSSIBLE?

9/21/2022

Coffee prices have skyrocketed for various reasons. Among them, the low production due to climate change, the logistical problems of the pandemic, generalized inflation and the war in Ukraine. The latter has considerably reduced access to inputs such as inorganic fertilizers, which has not only increased the costs of coffee production, but has also significantly reduced the profit margin of coffee farmers.

Russia is the world's biggest fertilizer exporter, but its war with Ukraine has disrupted shipments and pushed up prices for natural gas, a key ingredient in fertilizer manufacturing. Ammonium nitrate and urea, the two main sources of nitrogen fertilizer, are the most widely used fertilizers in the world. Fertilizer prices had already more than doubled in the last 18 months, affecting coffee growers around the world.

BURUNDI OR RWANDA? THAT IS THE QUESTION.

9/9/2022

Why would you prefer one over the other, if they are only separated by an imaginary border? A coffee grown in northern Burundi has exactly the same microclimate, varietal, process and terroir as one from southern Rwanda. There is no difference other than the name of the origin until this point of the production process, although there are many differences in various aspects.

Both economies are overwhelmingly agricultural, and widely diversified farming is practiced throughout their territories. Arabica coffee is the main commercial crop and constitutes the main export of both countries. Being much more important in terms of total foreign exchange earnings for Burundi than for Rwanda, because the latter economy is more developed and diversified.

A TASTE FROM BURUNDI

7/29/2022

We often think that Burundi is not talked about enough in the specialty coffee industry, and at Kilimanjaro Specialty Coffees we want to change that idea and give this wonderful country and origin, which produces some of the best coffees in the world, the place that it deserves, on the African podium alongside Kenya and Ethiopia.

One of the smallest countries in Africa, Burundi is landlocked and has an equatorial climate. Burundi is part of the Albertine Rift, the western extension of the East African Rift. This is important because the soils of the Rift Valley are volcanic and very fertile. Its cultivation areas are characterized by producing a cup with intense phosphoric acidity, full body with some fruity notes and complex flavour.

How green is your coffee? Sustainability in specialty coffee.

1/20/2022

Sustainability is an ancient concept, but one that has been "modernized" in recent decades due to the great crisis of climate change that we are experiencing. In this century in particular, sustainability has ceased to involve a purely environmental aspect, and has been defined as the ability to coexist between the biosphere and human civilization, encompassing three large interdependent dimensions: the first social, second economic and third environmental.

Coffee supply shock: The perfect storm?

10/7/2021

A supply shock is an unexpected event that suddenly changes the supply of a product or raw material, resulting in an unforeseen change in price. Supply shocks can be negative, resulting in a decrease in supply; or positive, which produces an increase in supply; however, they are often negative. Assuming that aggregate demand does not change, a negative supply shock causes the price of a product to rise, while a positive supply shock reduces it.