The first coffee shamba in East Africa planted at St. Austin's Nairobi in 1902. Long before colonial settlers appropriated huge chunks of choicest lands in what would later be christened Kenya, their harbingers, the missionaries had already smelled the coffee, literally speaking. This pioneer coffee estate is captured in a 1902 picture at St Austin’s Church, which describes it as the first coffee to be planted in East Africa. So successful were the missionaries in coffee-growing that they were envied by the early settlers some of whom went bankrupt experimenting with different crops. Coffee was so lucrative on the global market that some enterprising Kenyans started smuggling coffee from Uganda.

Source: Standard Digital May 16, 2021 18:55 UTC