The Importance of Collaboration: Building Trust with Local Government in Kenya
Cupping coffees at Zabuni Specialty Coffee Auction. Left to Right: Anthony Ndung’u, New Kenya Planters Cooperative Union; Ambassador David Gacheru; Hon. Peter Munya, Cabinet Secretary for Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries, and Cooperatives (Kenya); Hon. Dr. John Mutunga, MP; Hon. Adan Ali, National Assembly Agriculture Committee Chair; Mel Tewahade, Infinity Wealth Management.
In America, the coffee industry is primarily business. If I have an idea that will revolutionize the industry, as an individual, I’m free to take my vision and run with it.
LABAN NJUGUNA explores the role of government agencies and the importance of making information available to growers in a Viewpoint feature for SCA News.
But in my native Kenya, a coffee-producing country on the east coast of Africa, any such change in the coffee industry is necessarily political, as much of the industry is supported and regulated by government. For example: Until very recently, by law, nearly all coffee sales in Kenya had to be made through a licensed marketer. While this law was intended to protect farmers by distributing power more equitably, in practice, it had the opposite effect: over time, the law did more to consolidate power with the already powerful actors.
As a result, Kenya’s farmers—who produce some of the industry’s highest (and highest valued) coffees—are increasingly disempowered. I’m from there, a son and grandson of coffee farmers, and I’ve spoken with hundreds of other farmers who show me what they’re going through. All they want is to feed their families and send their kids to school and at the end of the year they’ve got nothing to show for their work. No wonder they’re ripping up their coffee trees! Kenya’s coffee production is now a third of what it was in the late 1980s early 1990s. They tell me, “There’s no money to be made in coffee anymore,” but I tell them that’s not entirely true, it’s just that most farmers haven’t been sharing in the success—and they won’t until they are valued as true colleagues in the coffee industry, with equal input into the sales process.
For most Kenyan farmers operating with the country’s main mills, once their coffee is delivered to the mill, they don’t own it anymore. It’s up to someone else to decide what it’s worth, who to sell it to, and for how much. They never cup it and don’t know what happens to it; they’re always at someone else’s mercy. That’s why it doesn’t matter how much Western importers, roasters, and consumers pay or talk about ethical sourcing: if coffee is sourced through conventional sales channels, it continues to entrench inequitable power dynamics. If the money doesn’t make it back to the actual farmer, it won’t help. That’s when I really started to realize that if Kenya was truly going to tackle this issue, change had to come from within. It had to start with native Kenyans—those who understood our culture and political system and could work within it, not against it.
A Kenya government delegation meets with Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts during the first Nebraska Coffee Symposium hosted by Zabuni.
I first went to Kenya with the idea of the Zabuni Specialty Coffee Auction platform in January 2018, starting at the grassroots level, meeting with farmers, helping them gain a fuller understanding of the coffee industry beyond Kenya, and sharing our vision of what it would take for them to revitalize Kenya’s coffee industry. We knew that the key was for them to have the ability to directly access markets, sell their own coffee, build their own brands, and reap their own rewards. Zabuni would provide the mechanism that would allow them to keep ownership and control of their coffee, set a minimum price they were willing to accept, and benefit them first instead of last. We couldn’t just implement an ethical trading model in select locations on top of a broken system, we had to create an entirely different way of trading Kenyan coffee that would be accessible to all farmers.
Kenyan farmers are accustomed to receiving visits from foreign buyers who may or may not ever follow through on their purchases they promise, so my early efforts at building relationships were met with understandable skepticism. Many would not listen to us at first. In one meeting I attended in Mukurweini in Nyeri County, a riot nearly broke out over whether to hear us out. What calmed the farmers down was when I told them, you can send one bag of clean coffee or 1,000 bags, the choice is yours, they said nobody had ever come and said that to them, every marketer/dealer that comes always wants all or nothing, nobody had ever given them a choice. So, with persistent effort over time, we built trust.
We also quickly realized that we needed to build trust with local government, who wanted to make things better for farmers. We started by going to county-level officials, showing them that any initiative that doesn’t directly benefit the farmers will never help the industry as a whole, no matter how much effort and money are poured into it.
As members of parliament (MPs) from coffee-growing regions became interested, the idea of enhancing Direct Trade eventually found its way into the national government. On two different occasions, we invited members of parliament’s agriculture committees and other government officials to visit Zabuni in Nebraska. We were able to take the first group of delegates around to roasteries and coffee shops and help them understand why the best way Kenya can add value to their beans is to increase quality, and then ensure that farmers are paid fairly based on the quality they produce.
At the launch of Zabuni Specialty Coffee Auction in Grand Island, Nebraska. From left to right: Laban Njuguna – Founder/CEO, Zabuni Specialty Coffee Auction; Dave Taylor – President, Grand Island Area Economic Development Corporation; Sen. Peter Ndwiga – Chair, Senate Select Committee on Agriculture; Sen. Kithure Kindiki; Nebraska Senator Dan Quick; Hon. Peter Munya – Cabinet Secretary for Trade, Investment, and Cooperatives (Government of Kenya); Hon. Adan Ali, MP – Chair, Agriculture Committee; Hon. Gabriel Kago, MP; Hon. Dr. John Mutunga, MP.
By the time the delegations returned to Kenya, we had also hashed out a plan of what needed to happen for farmers to receive that fair compensation. Zabuni would basically copy all the good parts of the Nairobi Coffee Exchange (NCE)—Kenya’s acclaimed state-run coffee auction which sells over 85% of the country’s coffee—but make it transparent and accessible to all so that any coffee buyer, whether they’re looking for a whole container or a single bag, could efficiently access and afford the best that Kenya has to offer. Zabuni would provide logistical infrastructure on the American side—free climate-controlled warehousing to farmers, an online bidding platform, and last-mile shipping. Zabuni would also allow for a “buy now” option for those who don’t wish to sell/purchase via auction. The Kenyan government would assure farmers unfettered access to a “grower-marketer” license, and any farmer who acquired it would have authority to sell their coffee themselves to whomever they please.
It’s so true that coffee is relational; it has certainly been a collaborative effort on behalf of so many people to bring Zabuni to where it is today. Others have tried to accomplish what we’re doing—paying Kenyan farmers more for their coffee—but they’ve been Westerners coming to Africa, trying to solve the problem from the outside, and it never worked. If Africa’s problems are going to be solved, Africans will have to take the lead and be a big part of the solution. That is where the future of the specialty coffee industry hangs, on including and empowering those at the origins that make it possible. I am proud to be a descendant of coffee farmers and a Black entrepreneur in the US specialty coffee industry. When you look at me, you’re seeing what descendants of coffee farmers look like; we’re not slave labor, we’re creative, educated, fearless, bold. Producing specialty coffee can be economically viable for everyone on the value chain, but only if opportunities, risks, and profits are shared more proportionally. Ethical sourcing and sustainability cannot just be buzz words, we must live out our ideals of equity, justice, and loving our neighbors. Asante sana.
LABAN NJUGUNA is the Founder and CEO of Zabuni Specialty Coffee Auction in Nebraska, US.
Government Agencies are one of 20 actors identified on the SCA’s Coffee Systems Map, which illustrates the complexity of this global value-generating ecosystem while recognizing previously invisible actors. Learn more about the Coffee Systems Map here.