15Zimbabwe
29,000 bags (ICO 2009)In-depth country profile: production, varieties, classification, history, current situation and points that remain uncertain. Region: Southern Africa.
Coffee growing in Zimbabwe goes back to the 1890s. Its history is nonetheless nothing like a continuous line, because diseases destroyed the first plantations.
It took until the end of the 1950s for a small group of farmers to really restart the harvest. All had trained in Kenya and India, that is, where the sector was already running.
Zimbabwe is a high-plateau country, landlocked. Its production remains modest and is concentrated in the Southeast, around Chipinge and Chimanimani.
This low volume has nevertheless not prevented it from building a reputation for quality. That rests on care rather than size, since the harvest there requires six to seven passes and hand sorting.
- Botanical species
- Arabica (mainly)
- Altitude
- 1,200 m
- Shade
- Permanent and protective
- Harvest
- Manual and selective (6 to 7 passes)
- Processing
- Wet process; sun drying on tables, manual selection
- Preparation
- Screen grading; gravity table sorting
- Harvest period
- July to October
- Packaging
- 60-kg bag
Official classification by bean size.
| Grade | Screen |
| AAA (“Pinnacle”) | 19/20 |
| AA | 18 |
| AB | 15 |
| E (Elephant) | 15 |
| PB (Peaberries) | 15 |
| C | 15/14 |
| TT | 14 |
Did you know? Zimbabwean beans show a curiosity, known as “Elephant” or “ears”: a deformation that causes a separation during roasting.
History
The crop goes back to the 1890s. Its history is made of breaks, because diseases destroyed the first plantations.
It was not until the end of the 1950s that a small group of farmers restarted the harvest. All had trained in Kenya and India, where coffee growing was already established.
The colonial finding of 1919 went in the same direction. The British reports saw no hope of an immediate revival in Natal, where various pests had killed the crop twenty years earlier.
The same reports, on the other hand, bet on the neighbor. Coffee “should certainly be established in the warmer parts of Rhodesia,” they wrote, that is, on the territory of present-day Zimbabwe.Country Profiles, Marco De Sousa Rosa, 2026; Ukers 1922, ch. XX, p. 216-244, p. 243
Country Profiles, Marco De Sousa Rosa, 2026; Ukers 1922, ch. XX, p. 216-244, p. 243Zimbabwe is one of the rare origins to have built a reputation for quality on a very low volume, in the Southeast, around Chipinge and Chimanimani. It is a landlocked high-plateau country, which weighs on the logistics cost of every bag.
Country Profiles, Marco De Sousa Rosa, 2026Today
The volume at the head of the profile, 29,000 bags, is that of the profile (ICO 2009). The orchard is planted at 1,200 meters, in Catimor, Catuai and Caturra, three Latin American lineages and not East African ones. Harvesting is manual and selective, in six to seven passes, and processing is by the wet process with sun drying on tables and manual selection.
Country Profiles, Marco De Sousa Rosa, 2026; World Coffee Research, Coffee Varieties Catalog 2025Gray areas
- The diseases that destroyed the first Zimbabwean plantations are not named by the sources consulted.
- No production volume after 2009 could be sourced.
- The effect of land reform on Zimbabwean coffee growing is not documented by any source in the corpus.
- The origin of the Latin American planting material planted in Zimbabwe (by whom, when) is not established.