Stephen Nandela is the regional evangelist for specialty coffee in the Western Rift Valley of Kenya.  In just a few years He’s gone from starting specialty processing to creating amazing microlots for export to convincing no short amount of neighbors and friends to start specialty coffee processing. Little did we know that we purchased almost the entirety of Stephen’s 2023 specialty harvest that was exported to the US and our 2024 visit to Stephen’s farm secured, in our minds, that he is going to be a greatÂ
partner for years to come. In 2015, Stephen moved back into his childhood home to live with his mother on a 6 acre plot near Eldoret. He converted their sugar cane production to coffee—selling their small production through direct export channels as a microlot (Bungoma Farm). On the heels of this success, Stephen bought a second farm—17 acres at 1900 MASL closer to the town of Kitale —which had been a coffee farm in the 1970s, but had gone mostly fallow until Stephen took over care of the land. The area where the farm is located is called Cherengany Hills—part of the Mt. Elgon mountain range, but with a particularly cold micro-climate. Stephen and his wife Lilian named the farm Nawiri, which means prosperity, but everyone calls it ‘Muinami’ which means ‘Bent’ or ‘those who work’ in Kikuyu.
