Sierra Leone's stenophylla bean could be a saviour of the coffee industry

There was a time when Coffea stenophylla, a species of coffee native to Guinea, Sierra Leone and Côte d’Ivoire, produced beans regarded by some as the best in the world with a distinct, sophisticated flavour deemed superior to the widely produced Arabica and robusta varieties.

Branded as ‘Highland Coffee of Sierra Leone’, it was a popular export to international markets from the late nineteenth century to around 1920. French buyers were particularly taken with it and were willing to pay a high price.

Despite its appeal to coffee connoisseurs, stenophylla fell out of favour with Sierra Leonean smallholder farmers, who were swayed by the increased yields possible with robusta coffee. While robusta was widely regarded as inferior to stenophylla in flavour, its caffeine-packed beans became a staple of the growing global instant coffee market. By the 1990s Sierra Leone was exporting around 20,000 tonnes of robusta a year with coffee more important to the country’s economy than cocoa. Discarded as a commercial crop and last collected in the wild in the 1950s, it seemed that stenophylla was gone forever.

However, a report released in the scientific journal Frontiers in Plant Science last year has revealed that a team of researchers from Sierra Leone and the UK has tracked down 15 of the plants growing wild in south central Sierra Leone. The batch of plants even had enough ripe fruits to collect a small sample for tasting with reactions suggesting the historic reports of coffea stenophylla’s quality were no exaggeration.

In July last year a blind-tasting session was conducted at London’s Union Hand-Roasted Coffee, which specialises in roasting hard-to-find speciality coffee. An expert panel awarded the stenophylla coffee a score of 80.25, based on the Specialty Coffee Association protocol in which any score over 80 signifies ‘speciality’ status.

The coffee also impressed at a later, more detailed sensory tasting session carried out at The French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (Cirad) in southern France in which a 15-strong panel of experts noted a natural sweetness, medium-high acidity, fruitiness, a good body and a complex range of flavours, including peach, blackcurrant, honey, jasmine, caramel and elderflower.

The results of the flavour assessment and details on the climate tolerance of stenophylla was published in April this year, in the leading plant science journal Nature Plants.

The implications of the discovery of this uncommon coffee bean could be huge for the global coffee industry and should be felt first among the farmers of Sierra Leone.

They are certainly in need of help. Three quarters of the Sierra Leone population work in agriculture, but the 11-year civil war devastated production here and despite efforts to rebuild, coffee export levels over the past decade have rarely got above a tenth of those recorded in the robusta boom years. Although there are probably over 30,000 smallholders who produce coffee, the productivity of their plantations is low, at an average of just 50kg per hectare, generating only about US$ 100 in annual income per family.

The rediscovery of Sierra Leone’s highland coffee has renewed hopes that the rare crop could be cultivated and produced commercially and help to revive the country’s floundering coffee industry. Sierra Leonean agriculture researcher Daniel Sarmu, who is helping to draft the country’s new national coffee policy, believes this is now the way forward.

Reports from local guides of sightings of the stenophylla plant in the Kasewe Forest Reserve had encouraged Sarmu to adjust the focus of his work with German NGO Welthungerhilfe (WHH) to rehabilitate robusta coffee production in Sierra Leone.

He was a part of the scientific expedition that set out to find stenophylla growing wild. The team also included UK representatives Professor Jeremy Haggar from the University of Greenwich and Doctor Aaron Davis from The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. When the discovery was made all three were of a mind that Sierra Leone would have to be at the forefront of the redevelopment of the crop.

Sarmu says: “Since this is a unique coffee it may have a higher price in the international market. A lost glory will be restored and stenophylla could be rapidly propagated by stem cuttings and/or in-vitro means for farm establishment for both smallholder and plantation farmers.”

With just over a dozen plants discovered so far, Prof Haggar says it is crucial that great care is taken in propagating new growth in nurseries as well as discouraging agricultural practises that reduce tree cover to help preserve any more wild populations. “All available seed is being used by WHH to establish plants in nurseries, which will start the process of bringing this species back into cultivation in Sierra Leone. We have much to learn, or relearn, about how best to grow and harvest this plant.

“We must conserve the few populations that we know of in the wild, which are essential to the future of this crop species. This can behelped by strengthening the awareness of communities living near the forest of the importance of conserving their local natural environment, but also by ensuring they have the opportunity to benefit from the forest. Support is needed to work with communities, and the national forestry, agriculture and conservation institutions, to develop a plan for the conservation and use of stenophylla coffee.”

Dr Davis is the head of coffee research at the Royal Botanic Gardens, which has historic connections to Sierra Leone, having once owned land in Freetown where many varieties of wild coffee were grown. He believes the return to cultivating a native species of coffee in Sierra Leone will be a huge source of pride and hopefully income in the country. “Our aspiration is to reintroduce the farming of stenophylla as a means of improving the income for small-holder coffee farmers. Stenophylla coffee is part of Sierra Leone’s biological and cultural heritage.” He adds that if these next steps are carefully taken the farming of stenophylla can be re-introduced in Sierra Leone, but there is much work to be done. “We need to undertake more research on stenophylla in order to fully evaluate its full potential as a crop plant and start plant breeding work.”

Prof Haggar offers a timescale: “It’s going to take about five years before we have the first trial plantations, by which time we hope to have enough sacks of coffee to fulfil the needs of a few specialty buyers. Within ten years, our aspiration is to have enough coffee to fill at least one shipping container.”

So, it will take time for farmers in Sierra Leone to see the benefit. Similarly, coffee lovers keen to start their day with a cup of stenophylla will have to be patient. The wait will be worth it, Dr Davis can confirm. He was among the panel of experts who sampled the coffee at the London tasting and he was delighted and surprised – given the tiny 10-gram wild sample – at just how good it was. The academic has been studying the diversity of wild coffee for many years and has named “around 25” species new to science. There are now 124 wild coffee species in the world, yet until the rediscovery of stenophylla none had challenged the hegemony of Arabica and robusta on taste.

The global coffee industry is massive with more than two billion cups consumed every day. Discerning drinkers are always looking for more authentic experiences and a rare bean from Sierra Leone with speciality flavour notes is sure to be in high demand.

It’s not only in flavour where stenophylla coffee may have the beating of Arabica and robusta. There is another advantage that may hold the key to future-proofing the global coffee supply chain against challenges such as climate change and diseases.

The report’s climate analysis found that stenophylla is a heat-resilientplant. It can grow at an averageannual temperature of 24.9C, which is up to 6.8C higher than Arabica and1.9C higher than robusta. Considering the world relies on Arabica androbusta for 99 per cent of its coffee consumption, this vulnerability to rising temperatures is a huge concern for the future of the industry. The rediscovery of stenophylla marks a welcome lifeline in protecting coffee farming from the climate crisis. Dr Davis has described it as a “once in a lifetime discovery” with far-reaching effects. “Stenophylla is an important resource for breeding a new generation of climate-resilient coffee crop plants, given that is possesses a great flavour and heat tolerance.”

Though he points out the team’s findings requires further testing, Dr Davis suggests that stenophylla also does not share Arabica’s susceptibility to coffee leaf rust, a devastating fungus that has severely impacted coffee plantations in Central and South America.

With these developments, Sierra Leone has suddenly gone from being a footnote in coffee production’s past to being centre stage in its future.

As Prof Haggar says: “There is still a long road to travel, but maybe within a decade Sierra Leone can once again return as a country of origin for the coffee connoisseur, and at the same time improve the income of its farmers.”

Despite its long history of coffee growing, Sierra Leone is not known for its local coffee drinking culture with many people opting instead for instant coffee from brands such as Nescafé. However, start-ups such as Hannah’s Coffee Couriers/Salon Coffee are starting to change the narrative.

The café in Freetown is run by economics graduate Hannah Tarawally and serves artisan coffee made from robusta beans harvested in the Kuido Hills in the country’s Eastern Province and hand-roasted on-site.

Hannah began hand-roasting her own beans in 2015 and was one of the first in the country to do so. Since that time, she has attracted many converts to the taste of whole-bean coffee. “Before, my friends don’t drink coffee, but because I introduced it to them, they can see and taste the difference,” she says.

The business has expanded. The café arrived in the capital in 2020 and Hannah continues to sell packaged whole-bean and ground coffee – all harvested, selected and roasted in Sierra Leone – with customers now in Liberia and plans in place to enter the European market.

For more information, visit hannahscoffee.com

Another Freetown café that roasts its own authentic local beans. Proprietor Sylthea Redwood-Sawyerr roasts in small batches in her kitchen – always with music blasting – using beans sourced from farms in Yekeboma in the Kono District. The café also offers a range of home-made cakes that go great with a cuppa. If you are in the capital, you can also get the fresh-brewed homemade coffee delivered to your door or bags of the home-roasted beans are available at city outlets such as 232 Complex, Crown Xpress and Choithram’s Supermarket.

For more information, visit Nina’s Coffee Facebook page @NinasCoffeeLove