Attention coffee-lovers: a special new coffee has just been launched in Paris. It has cereal and woody notes and a complex, unique flavour that has not been experienced before. But that’s not the only reason people are interested in Suluja ti South Sudan.
Suluja ti is exceptional in several ways. It comes from South Sudan – the cradle of coffee and one of the only places in the world where arabica and robusta coffee still grows wild. The soil, the climate, and the intrinsic quality of the coffee trees combine to create an exceptionally high-quality coffee.
Premium coffee is normally made from arabica beans, with robusta beans occasionally included for strength. Suluja ti, by contrast, is a wholly robusta coffee, but one with a more complex sensory profile than most robustas. It is also made from plants that have survived the civil war, making it one of the rarest coffees in the world.
Nespresso has sourced several tons of this coffee since 2013 but, given the nascent status of the coffee revival project, the volumes are extremely low compared with other coffee-producing countries.
Suluja ti is important for more than the way it tastes, however. It is the first coffee ever to be exported from South Sudan – the world’s newest country. But it is the hope it brings in its wake that makes Suluja ti important.
Although the area has a long history of producing some of the best beans in the world, the industry was largely destroyed during the civil war. Nespresso is the first major coffee company to enter South Sudan and, since 2011, it has invested over CHF700,000 (nearly £500,000) into its coffee industry. It plans to invest about CHF2.5m over the next few years to expand its project to include several thousand farmers.
“Nespresso’s goal is to source the highest-quality coffee in the world,” says Nespresso CEO Jean-Marc Duvoisin. “We believe that the only way to continue to deliver quality and consistency to customers is to protect the supply of our coffees.
Experience has shown us that the best way to do this is to build a more environmentally sustainable and financially equitable outcome for farmers. Suluja ti South Sudan is an exceptional coffee, and we are very proud of the positive impact this project is having on farmers and their families.”
Nespresso has also partnered with TechnoServe – a non-profit organisation that trains smallholder farmers to start coffee nurseries, plant coffee trees and improve their agricultural practices to increase their productivity and the quality of their coffee.
“Since 2013, TechnoServe has worked with these farmers to improve the quality and yields of their coffee, establish the country’s first coffee cooperatives, and open the country’s first wet mills to process the coffee to a high standard,” says William Warshauer, president and CEO of TechnoServe.
Wet mills – a central part of the coffee-production process – play a key role in improving the quality of the coffee, but are unusual in the region. They bring immediate time and cost benefits for the farmers, who will previously have hulled and ground the coffee by hand. Wet milling also helps give this coffee its distinct aroma profile, when the beans are briefly fermented in water.
Clearly, Suluja ti will have a positive impact for South Sudanese farmers and the economy as a whole. This is the first significant non-oil export from South Sudan and has the potential to create a new “grassroots” economy. A country can often find its oil or other natural resources being managed in a very centralised and politicised manner. In the case of agriculture, however, incomes tend to stay in the community, being spent on food, school fees, or hiring labour to help on the farms.
“These efforts not only improve incomes for thousands of farmers, but build an important agricultural export in a country heavily reliant on oil for income,” says Warshauer.
Farmers from the three coffee exporting co-operatives that have been set up in the Yei region agree. “I have seen that there is great change within the community,” says coffee farmer Joseph Malish Thomas. “We want to produce the right quality. People now have hope. We will be able to pay school fees for children and in the end develop the country.”
Daniel Weston, head of Creating Shared Value at Nespresso, adds: “We are extremely proud of what we are doing – each small contribution is a step in the right direction. But this is not the end game; we are a small part of rebuilding a peaceful and thriving economy. This is a tiny piece of the puzzle, a positive piece.”
