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Coffee or tea in northeast Africa?

The Vancouver Sun here has an informative but confusing article about northeast African caffeinated drinking habits.  The headline refers to former tea-drinkers switching to coffee, something that appears to be happening in big cities with fashionable coffee shops.  The opening paragraph of the article refers to the abandonment by young people of the practice of men (and only men) drinking an Arab-style bitter coffee called kahawa chungu.  The article as a whole discusses the problem of coffee-producing countries where most people drink black tea, a legacy of British colonialism.  Kenyans consume only 3,000 tons of the 50,000 tons of coffee grown in their country.  Ugandans drink only 8,400 tons of the 198,000 tons of coffee grown in their country.  In contrast, Ethiopians (whose only time under colonial rule was briefly under coffee-loving Italians) drink half of the coffee grown in their country.

Posted by David Fahey on February 13, 2010 at 09:11 AM in Coffee, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tea, Uganda | Permalink