Kilimanjaro

Kilimanjaro Region, in northern Tanzania around Africa’s tallest mountain, is one of the country’s original Arabica coffee zones, grown on the mountain’s lower slopes by Chagga smallholders. Organized coffee marketing here dates to 1933, when the Kilimanjaro Native Co-operative Union (KNCU) was founded; KNCU (reinstated in 1984 after a 1976-84 cooperative ban) still operates today with roughly 70,000 members. Moshi also hosts the Tanzania Coffee Board’s national coffee auction, the country’s central trading floor regardless of growing region. Kilimanjaro is additionally one of Tanzania’s main vanilla-growing areas, cultivated at moderate altitudes below about 1,500m. “Kilimanjaro” has been usable in some export markets as a general label for Tanzanian coffee since 1991.