Cooperatives and MSMEs Cabinet Secretary Simon Chelugui on Wednesday revealed that Kenya’s coffee emerged as the best in a global competition.
According to Chelugui, coffee from Chinga, an Othaya-based farm topped the World Coffee Competition held in South Korea at the beginning of May, 2024.
The competition in question saw various companies display their products which ended up in Kenya being ranked top.
“In what signifies the tremendous progress that we continue to make in the coffee subsector, Othaya-based coffee producer, Chinga Farm, was voted number one in the just concluded World Coffee Competition (WCC) in South Korea,” stated Chelugui.
According to the competition judges, Kenya’s coffee beans were established to have outstanding quality and flavour.
"We hereby certify that the coffee farm has been evaluated to have outstanding quality and flavour potential in their Coffee Beans as ranked above at the K-Coffee Award, "World Best Coffee, 2024, which was a major event of the 2024 Coffee Festival in Nowon, the certificate awarded to Chinga Farm reads in part.
Chinga Farm currently hosts 17 factories with a total membership of 11, 000 small-scale farmers under its wing.
Chelugui affirmed that the feat could directly be attributed to the government’s ongoing reforms in the sector.
Additionally, the CS affirmed that this was a step in the right direction toward ensuring that Kenyan farmers were compensated fairly with a minimum return of Ksh 100 per kilo.
“As a Ministry, we will continue to champion coffee reforms with a Guaranteed Minimum Return (GMR) of Ksh100 per kilo of Coffee Cherry,” stated Chelugui.
In recent times, coffee has been overtaken by other commodities in terms of revenues generated when exported to foreign markets.
According to data posted by the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC), tea topped the volume of exports to the UK followed by cut flowers with coffee coming a close third.
