Tea and Coffee

Article 116 explains that rooibos grows commercially only in South Africa’s Cederberg, with about eight processors handling around 90% of supply. Article 118 describes honeybush moving from wild harvesting to farming. Article 119 records South African black tea at roughly 4 to 7 million kilograms a year, a minnow against East Africa. Article 123 notes that South Africa is barely a coffee producer.

Zimbabwe’s Eastern Highlands grow tea and coffee, including estates in the Chipinge area. Zambia has a coffee sector in its northern and central provinces and tea on a small scale. Botswana and Namibia lack the climate for tea and coffee. Zimbabwe's tea exports earned US$12.66 million in 2025, and its coffee crop is about 350 tonnes at roughly US$6 a kilogram. Zambia's Kawambwa estate makes about 660,000 kilograms of processed tea a year, and the country exported about 2,000 tonnes of green coffee in 2019. Botswana imported US$7.38 million of tea and Namibia US$9.49 million of coffee in 2023.

Black tea is sold at auctions, notably Mombasa for East and Central Africa, and through direct contracts, priced per kilogram of made tea. Coffee is priced against world arabica prices with premiums for quality and origin, sold through exporters, auctions or directly to roasters. Specialty coffee scored on quality can earn several times the commodity price.

Zimbabwe and Zambia export tea and coffee. South Africa imports most of its black tea and coffee and exports rooibos and honeybush worldwide. Article 117 explains how South Africa protected the rooibos name against biopiracy, securing it as a geographical indication.

For tea, growers sell green leaf to a factory within hours of plucking, and the factory makes and sells the tea. Article 120 presents Kenya’s smallholder tea model as the template for organising small growers around shared factories. For coffee, growers pick cherries, which are processed by pulping and drying into green beans for export or roasting. Roasting and branding locally capture the highest margins.

Climate is the decisive barrier: tea and coffee need altitude, cool temperatures and high rainfall or irrigation. Specialty coffee buyers require traceability, quality scoring and often certification. Geographical indications protect rooibos and honeybush names.

Real minimum capital. Plants, land preparation, shade and irrigation, then three to four years before coffee bears and longer for tea to reach full production. Processing equipment for coffee or access to a tea factory.

Input choke points. Suitable land at altitude, quality planting material, and a factory or processor within reach.

Offtake options. Tea factories and estates, coffee exporters, processors, local roasters and specialty buyers.

Who to call. In Zimbabwe, Eastern Highlands tea and coffee estates and their outgrower schemes. In Zambia, coffee growers and exporters. In South Africa, rooibos and honeybush processors and their councils.

The verdict for a small holding. Tea and coffee are open only to land in the right highland climate, best entered as an outgrower to an estate or factory. Specialty coffee with local roasting and an origin brand is the highest-value route for those who have the land.

Tea bushes are planted, shaped and plucked commercially from about three to four years, then plucked every one to two weeks through the growing season for fifty years or more. Coffee trees bear a first crop in about their third year and full crops from the fifth or sixth; the cherries ripen seven to nine months after flowering. Rooibos is cut for the first time about 18 months after planting and then each summer for about five years.

Tea is plucked as two leaves and a bud, the plucking standard that decides quality; coarser plucking yields more leaf but a cheaper tea. The factory withers, rolls, ferments and dries it into made tea, sorted by particle size. A coffee cherry holds two beans inside the skin, the pulp, a sticky mucilage and a papery parchment. The processor removes these layers to produce green coffee, the traded product, which the roaster then turns into the coffee people drink. Rooibos is cut, chopped, fermented in heaps and dried in the sun.

Made tea is graded by leaf size into grades such as broken pekoe, pekoe fannings and dust, and sold at auction or under contract. Green coffee is graded by bean size, measured by screen, and by defects, and specialty coffee by a cup score from professional tasters. Rooibos is graded by colour, cut length and the share of fine dust.

Origin and IP. Rooibos is registered in the European Union as a protected designation of origin: only rooibos grown in its home region of South Africa may use the name there. Single-origin coffees and teas sell on their place of origin.

Tea and coffee are long-lived crops, and the diseases that matter attack the tree itself. This is the owner's checklist, not the science: enough to protect the investment and supervise the expert.

• Coffee leaf rust. Plant resistant varieties and spray when it appears.
• Coffee berry disease. Follow the spray programme in wet weather.
• Coffee berry borer and antestia bug. Scout and control; they cut quality.
• Root rot in tea. Remove infected bushes and old stumps.
• Mites in tea. Scout in dry weather.

When to call the expert. Call the agronomist or the factory's field officer when leaves show orange powder, berries blacken or bushes die back.

These are the specialists a tea and coffee business needs as it grows. You do not need to do their work; you need to know who they are, when to bring them in and what to expect from them. Module C11 teaches how to recruit, contract and manage them.

Check the land’s altitude, temperature and rainfall against the crop. If it fits, cost establishment in T-M18-02 Establishment Cost, estimate outgrower income in T-M18-03 Contract Grower Income, test processing or roasting in T-M18-04 Processing Margin, compare prices in T-M18-05 and enter the result in T-M18-01 Enterprise Budget.

Calculators: T-M18-01 Enterprise Budget, T-M18-02 Establishment Cost, T-M18-03 Contract Grower Income, T-M18-04 Processing Margin, T-M18-05 Market Price Comparator.

Library sources: LIB-A116, LIB-A117, LIB-A118, LIB-A119, LIB-A120, LIB-A123; LIB-P-Rooibos, LIB-P-Honeybush, LIB-P-Honeybush-IP, LIB-P-BlackTea; LIB-C-ZW-TeaCoffee, LIB-C-ZM-TeaCoffee, LIB-C-BW-TeaCoffee, LIB-C-NA-TeaCoffee.