The story
Mzuzu Coffee Festival in Mzuzu
Mzuzu Coffee Festival is associated with Mzuzu, the main city of northern Malawi and the commercial hub for the country's small but distinctive Arabica coffee industry, grown by smallholder farmers in the surrounding Misuku, Phoka and Viphya highlands. A coffee-themed festival fits naturally with the city's role as home to the long-running Mzuzu Coffee Planters Cooperative Union, though independent confirmation of this specific event's dates and format is limited.
Coffee arrived in Malawi's northern highlands under colonial-era mission and settler farming, but it survived and grew afterward mainly through smallholder cooperatives, most visibly the Mzuzu Coffee Planters Cooperative Union, which has organised farmers around Mzuzu, the Misuku Hills near the Tanzanian border, Phoka in Rumphi, and the Viphya highlands to grow, wash and market Arabica beans under a shared brand.