Coffee
We Work
Thoughts
Projects
Portal
Mozambique’s coffee industry is at the embryonic stage, with most modern coffee projects beginning after 2020.
In recent years the government of Mozambique has created a ten year sector development plan that aims to increase production to 5000 hectares from the current total of around 300, and has created AMOCAFÉ, a national association of coffee producers. The government was targeting a production of around 100 tons in 2025 with best estimates putting the final output at around 90 tons.
Most of the country’s current coffee projects are focused on reforestation of degraded lands, primarily in the central regions of Gorongosa and Chimanimani. In these areas new shade covered coffee production is used successfully as a method for reforesting lands previously cleared for more intensive agriculture.
Within this context, Namaacha is something of an outlier.
A small family farm managed by brothers Polyphile and Muhire, Namaaacha is located in the region of the same name in the south of Mozambique, west of the capital city Maputo and close to the borders with Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) and South Africa. namaacha is very far from Mozambique’s other coffee regions and much further from the equator than most global arabica producing regions.
The farm is located at a latitude around 26° south. At the same time namaacha is only around 800 metres above sea level. Just as in the Sierra Mazateca regions of Oaxaca, Mexico (some of the most northerly grown coffees we work with) we find that at these high latitudes, lower altitude coffees present a roasting and flavour profile more like what we expect from much higher grown coffees in more tropical areas.
Namaacha has four hectares of land producing coffee and this past year Polyphile and Muhire planted a further four and a half hectares with new coffee seedlings. They have also added shade cover plantings that are currently younger than the coffee trees but will in time provide shade and cover.
Head to the Roaster’s Portal