Tanzania

Why this origin matters

Tanzania grows both species in separate parts of a very large country, and the USDA attaché describes it as one of three major producers of what the trade calls Colombian Mild arabica, alongside Colombia and Kenya, with about six per cent of that category's production. Coffee is the country's most significant cash crop, grown by smallholders on plots averaging well under a hectare, and the drink itself comes a distant second to tea at home.

Where coffee grows

Arabica is grown at the two ends of the country: in the far north around Kilimanjaro and Arusha, and in the far south in Mbeya, Njombe and Mbinga. Robusta is grown in the north-west, in the Kagera region beside Lake Victoria, where new planting is concentrated. About 90 per cent of production comes from some 320,000 smallholders and the rest from around a hundred large farms. In the north and west coffee is commonly intercropped with bananas; in the south it is more often grown as a crop by itself.

Species and varieties

The two species are close to level. The attaché's supply table for 2025/26 gives 750,000 bags of arabica and 700,000 of robusta, about 52 and 48 per cent, and robusta is driving the current expansion. The text of the 2025 report gave 60.9 per cent arabica and 39.1 per cent robusta; neither its own table nor the 2026 edition bears those shares out. Most trees are old — typically more than 25 years — and the coffee board has been distributing improved seedlings by the million to replace them.

Harvest

The coffee board's calendar, as the attaché's 2026 report prints it, runs from July to December in the northern and southern zones and from May to October in the west. The 2025 report gave July to October for the country as a whole.

How the coffee is processed

The report read for this page does not describe how Tanzanian coffee is processed. Colombian Milds, the category it places Tanzanian arabica in, is a trade grouping generally used for washed arabica; CoffeeHQ has read no document that sets out Tanzanian practice.

How it is graded and sold

Almost all of the crop is exported as green coffee. The European Union is the largest buyer by a wide margin, followed by Japan; exports to the United States have risen every year since 2021, from about 41,000 bags to about 128,000 in 2025. A small quantity of soluble coffee is made at Bukoba, in the robusta-growing north-west, and exports of it fell from about 10,900 bags in 2022 to about 800 in 2025.

What it tends to taste like

No description of taste is given here; the report read for this page offers none. Arabica from the highlands and robusta from Kagera are different crops.

Preparation traditions

How coffee is traditionally prepared and served in this country, in CoffeeHQ's international preparation atlas.

• Swahili kahawa chungu
• Tanzanian street kahawa

History

Pressures on the sector

• Old trees and low inputs. Coffee growers receive little of the fertiliser subsidy given to other crops, and only an estimated 40 per cent of farmers in the north and south, and two per cent in the west, use inorganic fertiliser at all.
• Slow renewal. Production stood at 1.35 million bags in both 2023/24 and 2024/25 while rehabilitated farms matured. The attaché estimates 1.45 million for 2025/26 and puts the further rise it forecasts down to fields rehabilitated between 2019 and 2024 reaching full bearing.
• A small home market: tea is cheaper and long preferred, roasting capacity is limited, and domestic consumption is under a tenth of production.

Institutions worth knowing

• Tanzania Coffee Board