Zuma
Zuma is a Nigerian coffee company sourcing its produce from farmers in the Mambila Plateau Taraba state of North-East Nigeria. While the high-mountain region (1300 meters altitude) is a traditional coffee-planting area, many coffee farmers have abandoned their trees due to low productivity and low-income opportunities.
The company generates revenue through buying coffee from contract farmers, cleaning, sorting, roasting, packing the coffee beans and then selling them in bulk through retail shops. The company also trains farmers in technical know-how and provides them with pesticides and fertilisers to increase output. Zuma introduced some business innovations through training and input provision.
In 2022 the company had 650 farmers in its value chain (95% outgrowers). The firm estimates that about 35% of the farmers they work with were very poor, 30% poor, 25% low income and 10% better off. With the coffee production, people move up the income ladder. Zuma coffee deliberately encourages the wives of coffee farmers in the coffee business; these women traditionally stay at home. Zuma actively gained the husbands' (coffee farmers) confidence to allow their wives to work. Today, about 35% of the suppliers and workers are women.