Collection: Africa & Middle East

If coffee was born in Africa, growing wild in Ethiopia and harvested for a variety of uses since "time immemorial" (as the history writers seem inclined to phrase it), then coffee came of age on the Arabian Peninsula, aka Arabia Felix, aka Yemen, where coffee brewing and cultivation was discovered, or invented, depending on how you look at it, giving rise to the world's first famous coffee from the port of Mocha. Ironically, Africa was also one of the last places to grow coffee commercially. Coffee plantings were not successful in Kenya until the 20th century and in several countries coffee has grown commercially for less than 60 years.