Exclusive Kenya Cupping Event

Featured By: Daily Coffee News

Written By: Nick Brown | Editor

Grand Parade Coffee, San Francisco based Kenyan specialty coffee importer, hosted a unique cupping with prominent Bay Area coffee professionals on September 10, 2018 in Berkeley, California. The event featured Professor Joseph Kieyah, president appointed Chairman of the Kenya Coffee Task Force, who led a conversation about the ongoing reforms in the Kenya coffee sector.

In the CoRo cupping room, the Kenyan government and US industry leaders had a face to face discussion about challenges, issues, and resolutions for Kenyan coffee. The goal for Kenya was to understand the demand market’s needs so that they may rise to the occasion. Professor Kieyah shared the Coffee Task Force’s reform implementations which are creating new infrastructure on the supply side. With this focus in place, it is now time to engage the global market.

Kenya is widely regarded in specialty coffee circles as offering some of the world’s finest specialty coffees, yet countrywide production and export revenues have declined in recent years due to a number of factors, including political instability, a lack of engagement among younger generations and coffeelands being taken over by housing developments. DCN published a brief history of the coffee exchange in Kenya, which is entering a new era as reforms sweep the sector.

“Production has declined significantly mainly due to an unfavorable trading structure,” Grand Paradé, led by entrepreneur Kavi Bailey, said in a description of the event. “Disenfranchised Kenyan farmers are abandoning the crop at an alarming rate and a dis-incentivized youth are moving to cities for better-paying jobs.”