Kilimanjaro

Kilimanjaro coffee comes from Tanzania’s far north. On the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Meru, around Moshi and Arusha, the Chagga and their neighbours have grown washed arabica for about a century, and founded what Coffee Review calls Africa’s first cooperative. The north is still home to the country’s coffee research institute, but it now grows only a small share of Tanzania’s coffee.

The short version

• Washed arabica from Kilimanjaro and Meru, sold as Kilimanjaro, Arusha or Moshi.
• Brighter, sweeter and more intense than other Tanzanian coffees, Coffee Review says.
• About 180,000 farmers in the northern zone, on 0.5–2 acres each.
• Africa’s oldest coffee cooperative, the KNCU, in Moshi.
• Harvest from July to December.

What does Kilimanjaro coffee taste like?

Bright and sweet. Coffee Review places the northern coffees, from the slopes of Kilimanjaro and Meru, at the brighter, sweeter and relatively more intense end of the Tanzanian profile, a cup it likens to a good Kenya, though usually less intense and arguably more balanced, and “almost always sweetly tart”. Most high-end Tanzanian coffee comes from Bourbon types, it says, which can give a “plump berryish sweetness balanced by dry, pungent vivacity”. The coffee is washed, and the best is processed Kenya-style at central wet mills, with a second soak and drying on raised tables.

How much coffee does it grow?

Less than it once did. The figures:

Measure	Figure	Source
Northern zone (Kilimanjaro, Arusha, Manyara, Tanga): area	89,420 ha	TaCRI
Northern zone: output	About 12,920 t of parchment a year	TaCRI
Northern zone: potential	59,000 t a year	TaCRI
Kilimanjaro region, 2020/21	1,610 t	Tanzania Coffee Board
Arusha region, 2020/21	1,727 t	Tanzania Coffee Board

In 2020/21 Kilimanjaro and Arusha together grew less than a tenth of Kagera’s 41,429 tonnes, by our calculation. Yields are low: TaCRI reckons the zone could produce more than four times as much at 500 grams a tree. Arusha and Kilimanjaro remain among the five leading arabica regions, the coffee board says, behind Ruvuma and Songwe.

The Chagga and the cooperatives

Coffee came to the north under German rule, and the Chagga of Kilimanjaro took it up; in 1925 they formed the Kilimanjaro Native Planters’ Association, Wikipedia says. The Kilimanjaro Native Co-operative Union (KNCU), based in Moshi, followed: a union of about 90 primary cooperatives. Coffee Review dates it to 1924 and calls it Africa’s earliest cooperative; Wikipedia dates it to 1930. It flourished in the 1950s and 1960s, was nationalised in 1977, regained its independence in 1984 and lost 80% of its market after liberalisation in the 1990s before winning much of it back from 1998. The north also has Tanzania’s coffee research headquarters, TaCRI at Lyamungu, in Hai District, 23 km from Moshi, and the coffee board’s auction in Moshi.

Farms and harvest

The northern zone has about 180,000 coffee farmers, most on 0.5–2 acres, TaCRI says. In the north and west, coffee is intercropped with bananas, USDA notes; about 40% of northern and southern farmers use inorganic fertiliser. The coffee board’s calendar puts the northern harvest from July to December, and in 2026 the northern auction zone, Kilimanjaro, Arusha, Manyara, Morogoro and Tanga, opened on 1 July.

Kilimanjaro and other Tanzanian origins

• Coffee in Tanzania: the whole country, its output and its history.
• Mbinga: the southern highlands, now Tanzania’s biggest arabica area.
• Kagera: the robusta region by Lake Victoria.