South Sudan’s Excelsa Coffee: A Climate-Resilient Game Changer

• South Sudan’s rare excelsa coffee produces hope for a rescue for struggling farmers and the global coffee sector, as it is immune to climate-change challenges.
• Many commercial-scale developments hinder large-scale commercial success. Low support infrastructure, such as bad roads and ports for transport, exorbitant transport costs, and the political potential in that region make it a challenge.

As the green berries began to emerge at their growing stage, Catherine Bashiama’s fingers caressed and explored the branches that bud from a seedling, glowing while hunting for terminals.

For Bashiama, a mother of 12 from Central Equatoria, growing coffee is a new thing. But now, she sees the hope of a coffee type so rare and resistant to climatic conditions that it might indeed change the living conditions of her family. “I want to send my children to school so they can be the future generation,” she adds with quiet conviction.

Excelsa is a rare type of espresso coffee that was discovered over a century ago in Southern Sudan. Now, with climate change plaguing traditional coffee-growing regions, excelsa is the hot topic in the international coffee world. Record-high coffee prices, which are reducing livestock because of unpredictable weather conditions, are now pushing experts into a corner where they must find a solution; maybe excelsa is such a solution.

Resilient Coffee is an Essential Need

The largest coffee producer at present, Brazil, has seen a 12% drop in production this season due to severe droughts. This is a continuum of disaster experienced by most coffee nations.

Aaron Davis, head of coffee research at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London, feels compelled to underscore the urgent situation. “What history shows us is that sometimes the world doesn’t give you a choice, and right now many coffee farms are suffering from weakening yield due to climate change. And they are the ones that need help the most.”Excelsa, however, may well be the game changer.

Unlike the many well-consumed cultivars—arabica and robusta—the excelsa plant is naturally hardy. It survives under conditions of extreme drought and heat through its deep root system, thick, tough leaves, and robust stem. The trouble with Excelsa is its competition with other Arabica coffee varieties that support various competitive pest attacks and heavy-duty productivity.

Although ex-FLO, excelsa makes up less than 1% of the current coffee market. It will have to grow to a large scale if it is to help eradicate the barrier caused by climate change.

Forgotten Coffee Legacy of South Sudan

Initially, the popular opinion is that South Sudan does not cultivate coffee, like its neighbouring Ethiopia and Uganda. These two countries supported coffee production in the country back then during the time of the British colonisation of some parts of the country. Thereafter, coffee interests waned as the country was consumed by conflict and instability. According to long-time insiders, the older people in the region’s breadbasket of Nzara County recall that their grandparents and parents grew up growing coffee. Unfortunately, the young ones have not had a chance to behold it growing.

Excelsa was in a loop. Village men know it by the general nomenclature “the big tree,” considering their often enormous heights of smaller to medium sizes pruned accordingly for more comfortable picking. It tasted nothing like the bitter and strong robusta, but something more exotic, such as naturally sweet with chocolate, some dark fruits, and distinct hints of hazelnut. In terms of acidity, it leans toward Arabica, but it’s quite smooth—though it doesn’t have a light, clean finish.

A Declaring Promise with Serious Challenges

Equatoria Teak is an example of an agroforestry project, which in recent years has begun tests with excelsa coffee trees in South Sudan. Ian Paterson, the managing director, says that it has been a learning curve. “There is so little known about this coffee that we feel at the forefront of trying to unravel it,” he says.

The experiments are producing promising results; the trees can withstand high temperatures, and the organisation is assisting the apartheid-stricken local community. In 2007, the Equatoria Teak Company passed green coffee tree seedlings and provided training to farmers—approximately 1,500 of them in Bashiama. The simple approach will be that farmers grow the coffee and sell it back to the company, from where it gets processed and shipped.

This year, the same trees have borne their first fruits, and Paterson is dreaming of exporting at least seven metric tonnes of the coffee to fair trade stores in Europe. If the plan under development evolves as hoped, the equivalent of £1.6 million from coffee buying will be ploughed into the many facets of the wobbling South Sudanese economy by 2027. Even big players like Nespresso are interested. 

More buyers want assurance to put massive amounts of money into it, and that requires production to at least triple.

Roadblocks on the Path of Growth

Upkeeping is no walk in the park. It seems that the bureaucracy is set up as an obstacle, with all its catch-twenty-firsts and time-consuming fragmented procedures. Much of the battle-torn infrastructure is only smouldering ruins. The political disorder that intermittently engulfs the economy has nothing more than a pitch-dark grey on the already pessimistic horizon.

This is a lot of distance, even more so by road, under the hammering of potholes and without street lights, which are subsistence industries. Try 1,800 miles (3,000 kilometres) of reach to Mtongaa, and your truck is hauling 30 tonnes of coffee: first, sign away a steaming, ruinous cost of £5,900 before proceeding further in Uganda—an abnormal five times dearer than neighbouring countries.

Further south, however, in Western Equatoria, political tensions are likely to get messier. Such may well be the high stakes. Stipulated that Southern Sudan’s 5-year civil war ended with the signing of the peace deal in 2018, it is inconvenient to speak of continuing disturbances. Earlier this year, violent clashes erupted after the president of the country fired a state governor. During a recent visit to Nzara, Associated Press reporters witnessed roads being blocked by gunfire with people fleeing amidst the fear of intensifying violence.

There are expeditions to nurture decaying coffee plantations and to set up an agricultural school; however, the seed money remains out of reach. South Sudan manages to pay even the salaries of its civil servants, whose salaries are exorbitantly high for their output, and oil revenue is hit hard as they slide downwards due to the war in OPEC countries. Again, the biggest issue is poor funding.

Farmers, therefore, have a plight similar to that of livestock. Wildfires, almost always fleeing also from animal hunters or farmers, away from clearings. Not preempted much by Mr. Man, however poorly so.

A Truly Global Product That Hides Behind a Coffee Flavour

Despite all the hurdles, Excelsa is offering a sliver of hope—not only for farmers in South Sudan but for the world coffee sector as a whole. A highly climate-resilient plant, the variety excelsa is endowed with a unique taste profile that sets it on a storytelling stage of crisis within the opportunity.

For Bashiama and many others like her, the excelsa may mean more than just a successful coffee operation but also generates a future and help educate their kids, feed their kin, and find a way into a nation that is still in the process of finding its feet.

As the world seeks a resolution to the coffee crisis, they should know that the answer has been sprouting in the heart of Africa all this while.