Guji Jigesa Weysi FW G1 - Ethiopia

This exceptional lot was processed, dry milled and exported by our good friends at Testi Coffee, a family-run business owned and managed by the Yonis family, who are making a name for themselves on the Ethiopian Specialty Coffee scene. For many years (see below on the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange - ECX), Mercanta was unable to secure good traceability information on many of our Ethiopian lots. As of 2017, all this changed, and we are very happy to highlight the great work that these valued partners are doing at origin.

The first person in the Yonis family to get seriously involved with coffee was Faysel A. Yonis. Faysel began working with coffee in the late 1990s, but at the time he was purely involved in supplying the local market. As the potential for specialty coffee in the country increased, Faysel saw opportunity. Even though he was still constrained by the ECX, he had a feeling that things would change. Faysel established Testi Coffee in 2009 as a coffee exporting company, set about surrounding himself with exceptional coffee professionals, and hired his nephew, Adham, raised and educated in the USA, to help with outreach and marketing.

Today, Testi owns and/or operates four washing stations in Guji, Yirgacheffe, Sidamo and in Limu – all premier coffee producing regions. This lot was processed using the fully washed method at their Guji station. The coffee is named after one of the washing station collection points.

They work with small holder farmers, with the aim of securing the very best prices for their coffee so that they can pay fair prices for the cherry delivered. They have also recently established a 250 hectare farm in the Bench Maji Zone, where they plan to experiment with organic practices. They are currently also building a warehouse in Shakiso where they can process natural coffees locally, in the region where the coffee is grown. This keeps more revenue in the communities where the coffees are produced.

Testi’s objective is quality and building long term business relationships. Their washing stations are very well run and they do diligent work through sorting and screening to get clean and quality beans for export. Testi always adheres to the very highest quality standards to prepare and deliver nothing but high quality beans.

As of 2018, Testi has launched a quality improvement project at each of the four washing stations that they operate. Their PCS (Premium Cherry Selection) Project fully controls all aspects of harvest and processing in order to ensure that the fantastic natural quality of the coffee is maintained at each step. They are also making the most of the market liberalisation to benefit the small producers that they work with. Social projects, such as building new classrooms for the local school near their Guji processing factory are also important, and with support from their importing partners (watch this space) they hope to do even more in the future. They also currently have a drinking/household water provisioning project underway in Guji, and they plan to extend this to other communities in the future.
The name ‘Testi’ means Happy or Happiness in Harrari language (it is also the name of Faysel’s middle son). Certainly Testi is bringing happiness to small scale producers and roasters alike!

Guji Jigesa Coffee Washing Station

This washing station, which was established by Faysel in 2014, lies at 1,800 to 2,000 metres above sea level and produces amazing Natural and Washed lots. You probably recognise it as ‘Gigesa’ but the correct spelling is Jigesa we discovered through a recent visit.

The washing station is owned outright by the Yonis family (they operate several others on behalf of friends). Some 750 to 850 producers deliver here during the harvest season, and the washing station exports up to 6 containers of coffee a year.

Located in the Guji Zone (Oromia Region), Guji is named after a tribe of the Oromo people. Guji is bordered on the south and west by Borena, on the north by Gedeo and Sidama and on the east by Bale and the Somali Region. The Guji Zone was created in September 2002, when the upland woredas (towns) of the Borena Zone were renamed as Guji.

About the Guji region:

Guji is one of the zones of the Oromia Region of Ethiopia and is named after a tribe of the Oromo people. Guji is bordered on the south by Borena, on the west by the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region, on the north by the Ganale Dorya River which separates it from Bale and on the east by the Somali Region. The highest point in the zone is Mount Dara Tiniro. Cities and major include its administrative center, Negele. The Guji Zone was created in September 2002, when the upland woredas (administrative regions) of the Borena Zone were split apart to create it.

Like Yirgacheffe, coffees from the Guji area were previously categorised together with coffees from Sidamo (a very wide geographical classification encompassing much of central-south Ethopia). However Guji coffees are quite distinct from either Yirgacheffe or Sidamo coffee. Located in the southern portion of Sidamo the people of Guji have a long tradition of coffee cultivation. They are called the Oromo people and the hills and landscape allow for particular cultivars to develop in this region.

About the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange and Traceability:

For many years, Ethiopian coffee, some of the best in the world, was for the most part untraceable.

Starting in 2008, Ethiopia began the centralization of all coffee exports through the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX), where the coffees were ‘anonymised’, stripped of any information other than region, in the interest of the farmers, who were meant to receive top dollar for quality regardless of the ‘name’ of the washing station or farm. Coffees moving through the ECX were (still are) delivered to certified coffee labs, where they were cupped according to profile then graded and marked generically for export. This ‘equalising’ measure certainly benefitted some producers, but it had the negative impact of eliminating most roasters’ and importers’ ability to provide accurate information of the precise traceability of coffees. Even after the opening of the ‘second window’ (devised for direct sales of cooperative and certified coffee), as of the end of 2017 some 90 percent of coffees still moved through the ECX.

The end of March 2017 saw a huge overturning of this mandatory system. In a bill raised by the Ethiopian Coffee & Tea Development and Marketing Authority, Ethiopian coffee (even that sold through the ECX) can be marketed and sold with full traceability intact. The aim is to limit black market dealings, to demand higher prices and to enable Ethiopian producers to share in a greater piece of the pie.

In a bit more detail, the new system proposes that any exporter with a valid license will be allowed to sell directly to buyers without placing the coffee on the ECX first. There is a slight caveat – the parchment coffee will have to be sold within three days of arriving at the processing plant in Addis. If it is still unsold after three days (which is quite likely), it must be sold through the ECX: BUT with its traceability info intact rather than being deleted. Additionally, it is proposed that oversees companies will be able to plant and sell coffee.

Experts have commented that the reforms will actually create a system very like Ethiopia’s before the 2008 changes. Quoted in the financial times, Arkebe Oqubay, the government minister overseeing the reform, said he expects Ethiopia’s annual coffee exports to “soar”. (see https://www.ft.com/content/020bc846-393a-11e7-821a-6027b8a20f23)