history of Tanzania

The people of Tanzania, most notably the Haya people, have a relationship with coffee that predates written history. Tanzanians have long been cultivating coffee, and before they began brewing coffee, people would chew on the berries of the coffee plant. Coffee use was primarily restricted to religious rituals and tributes to royalty. The Haya people needed authorization from royals to grow coffee, making the product rarer and more valuable.

Throughout Africa, coffee plantations grew simultaneously with the popularity of coffee in Europe during the 19th century. With the arrival of German colonizers, the people of Tanzania were no longer in control of their coffee culture. Colonizers forced Tanzanians to grow coffee in their personal gardens, sell it at a very low price, and trade it for goods, tainting the Tanzanian's spiritual and regal associations with coffee and damaging their cultural relationship with it. Although coffee is still used in some religious ceremonies, European appropriation, commodification, and forced production has given the once highly culturally-valued plant negative connotations among Tanzanians. 

Following independence from British rule, Tanzanian farmers finally gained more control over their crops in the 1960s. Since 1990, farmers have been permitted to sell directly to suppliers, however, government overreach currently dominates the coffee industry in Tanzania, and farmers have little access to the coffee market.