Artisanal roasters seeking the next great specialty coffee have descended on Congo despite Kalashnikovs and corruption; ‘good body and nonthreatening complexity’
A dozen artisanal coffee aficionados from around the world hovered their noses above cups of steaming grounds and inhaled deeply. Then they tasted the coffee, swishing or chewing it, spit out the leftovers and used calculators on their smartphones to tally a final score for each sample of beans.
“I thought this was so great. It was so fleshy,” head judge Beth Ann Caspersen, who lives in Rhode Island, said about the highest-rated brew in one round of the competition, limited to coffee grown in this central African nation. It was easy to forget how Kalashnikov-wielding guards milled around outside while clapped-out sedans swerved around gaping potholes.
Congo is one of the last frontiers in a global scramble for the world’s best-tasting coffee. The rise in demand for specialty coffee, which accounts for one of every two cups sold in the U.S., has encouraged exporters, roasters and retailers to go places where the potential is huge—and so are the risks.
The jungle-clad, coffee-rich provinces of eastern Congo are home to militants still locked in a war that has claimed more than five million lives in the past 20 years. The nation’s fragile stability has been threatened anew by deadly clashes over the possibility that President Joseph Kabila will extend his 15-year rule by delaying until 2018 elections that had been scheduled for November.
The many challenges of doing business in Congo include death threats, kidnapping and extortion. Government officials often concoct new taxes on the spot or forge documents to demand more money than what is owed. Last year, at least 175 foreigners and Congolese, many working for aid organizations, were abducted and held for ransom, according to Human Rights Watch.