03Cameroon
690,000 bags (ICO 2009)In-depth country profile: production, varieties, classification, history, current situation and points still uncertain. Region: Africa.
Cameroonian coffee rests largely on canephora, which accounts for about 85% of production. Arabica, for its part, has taken refuge in the mountains of the West and North, where the volcanic soils, black and rich, suit it better. The first plants date back to 1905, but the sector did not really take off until the late 1920s.
Here, farming is done by families, on small areas, between shade trees and food crops. Yields remain modest, and these coffees often go into blends, like many West African coffees. The long global coffee crisis left its mark; in response, producers have gradually banded together in cooperatives.
- Botanical species
- Arabica (15%), Canephora (85%)
- Varieties
- Arabica: Blue Mountain; Canephora: Java
- Altitude
- 1,000 to 2,200 m (Arabica); 800 to 1,000 m (Canephora)
- Shade
- Forest and fruit trees
- Harvest
- Canephora: manual, non-selective (Nov.-Feb.); Arabica: manual, selective (Sept.-Feb.)
- Processing
- Canephora: dry process; Arabica: wet process (mainly)
- Sorting
- Canephora: mechanical; Arabica: manual and electronic
- Harvest period
- Canephora: Nov. to Feb.; Arabica: Sept. to Jan.
- Packaging
- 60-kg bag
Arabica: by grade
Cameroonian arabica is sorted into 6 grades, each marked with a letter from A to F. Each letter says two things at once. A size, detailed in the table below. And a cleanliness class, which is counted in defects.
Defects are always counted on a 300 g sample, which makes it possible to compare one lot with another. Grades A, B, C and E fall under the Prima class, capped at 15 defects. D is Supérieur, at 30 defects. F is Courant, at 60 defects.
| Grade | Details |
| A | 70% retained on screen 18, 30% on screen 17 |
| B | 70% on screen 17, 30% on screen 16 |
| C | Peaberry beans only (a single seed per cherry, rounded shape) |
| D | 70% on screen 16, 30% on screen 15 |
| E | Elephant beans only (large, misshapen beans) |
| F | 70% on screen 15, 30% on screen 14 |
Canephora: number of defects
| Class | Max defects |
| Extra Prima | 15 |
| Prima | 30 |
| Supérieur | 60 |
| Courant | 120 |
| Limite | 180 |
Canephora: bean size
| Grade | Screen |
| Large beans | 18/20 (screen 18 and above, max 1% retained on screen 16) |
| Grade 1 | 16/18 (30% retained on screen 18) |
| Grade 2 | 14/16 (30% retained on screen 16) |
| Grade 3 | 10 (30% retained on screen 14) |
There are also low-end lots: “triage” and “broken beans.”
History
The first plants are said to date from 1905, but the sector only took off at the end of the 1920s. In 1922, Ukers gives no line for Cameroon in his world table of exports: production there is still negligible on the scale of trade. The country did, however, give its name to a plant health episode: in 1933, a second coffee rust was identified there, distinct from Hemileia vastatrix.
Country Profiles, Marco De Sousa Rosa, 2026; Ukers 1922, ch. XXII, p. 289-291 (exports of the producing countries); LC ch. 13Cameroon has also played a role in the circulation of varieties, and this role comes down to a single lineage.
It is called Java. It is an Ethiopian landrace, passed through the island of Java in the 1920s before arriving in Cameroon.
French research selected it there in 1980, and for a precise reason: its tolerance to berry anthracnose. A coffee plant that withstands this fungus interests every country where it rages. Java was therefore distributed to Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama.
Despite its name, it has nothing to do with the Typica of Java. The name preserves the trace of one stage of the journey, not of a kinship.
World Coffee Research, Coffee Varieties Catalog 2025, Java profile; LC ch. 8Today
The volume at the head of the profile, 690,000 bags, is that of the profile (ICO 2009). Canephora accounts for about 85% of production, on the lowlands, in the dry process with non-selective manual harvesting from November to February; arabica has retreated to the volcanic soils of the West and North, between 1,000 and 2,200 meters, in the wet process with selective picking from September to February. Farming is by families, on small areas, under shade trees and mixed with food crops, with modest yields; a large part of the coffee goes into blends.
Country Profiles, Marco De Sousa Rosa, 2026The long price crisis left its mark on the Cameroonian sector, and the response was the gradual grouping of producers into cooperatives. This is the pattern common to canephora West Africa after the collapse of the quotas in 1989.
Country Profiles, Marco De Sousa Rosa, 2026; McCook, Coffee Is Not Forever (2019); ICO, indicative price 1997-2001; LC ch. 19Gray areas
- The date of 1905 comes from the profile; no primary source consulted here confirms it.
- The profile gives “Canephora: Java” as the variety: yet the name Java designates, in the varieties catalog, an arabica of Ethiopian origin. The ambiguity has not been resolved.
- No production figure after 2009 could be sourced for Cameroon.
- The current institutions of the Cameroonian sector are not documented by any of the sources in the corpus.