BLACK AROMA: THE STORY OF TANZANIAN COFFEE

Do you want to know more about the world class coffee produced in Tanzania, and the people who grow it?

For over 400,000 smallholder farmers in Tanzania coffee is everything.  Coffee provides them with money to feed their families, to send their children to school, and to access medical treatment.  Together these farmers support some four and a half million people. And on individual plots of five acres or less they produce over ninety percent of Tanzania´s coffee.

Coffee, Tanzania´s “black gold” is a major contributor to the country´s economy, but little has been written about it except in economic terms.  The beautifully photographed coffee table book “Black Aroma” tells the story of how Tanzanian coffee is grown through the stories of the farmers who grow it, allowing their voices to be heard.

Over a period of five months, anthropologist Alexandra Wilson and photographer Mwanzo Millinga travelled through the hills and valley of Tanzania's coffee growing regions, listening to farmers.  They brought back stories and images from the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro and Meru, from the Matengo hills in Ruvuma, from the Mbeya highlands and from the shores of the Great Lakes: stories as sweet and refreshing as your morning cup of coffee.

Tanzania is a land of diverse natural beauty and diverse cultures.  It has the climate, altitude and soil - and the skilled and hard-working farmers - to produce distinctive world class coffee. Find out for yourself: get to know our farmers using the links below, and buy the book!

To read some abbreviated chapters of the book - growers stories, follow the following links: