Mwalyego AMCOS

Mbeya, Tanzania

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Partner since: 2013 Traceable to: 150 Members Altitude: 1615 MASL Varietals: Kent, Bourbon, N39

Supplier Structure:

Cherries are pulped, washed, fermented for 48 hours, washed again and soaked for 18 hours before dried on raised beds

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Community Context

This group is named after their washing station in Mwalyego, a small town in Tanzania’s southern Mbeya district. AMCOS explains the rest – Agricultural Marketing and Cooperative Society’. We just call them Mwalyego (mwah-lee-ego). This is a 150 farmer strong group you can find by looking for a town called ‘Iwala’ on the map, about 10 miles west of Mbeya City, on the southern slopes of Mt. Mbeya. You can say that they are in the heart of Mbeya. That’s what the judges seem to say – Mwalyego has led the way in the country’s Taste of Harvest competition, some years sweeping the country’s top spots. They are struggling with their success; the better they do the more they pay members. The more they pay, the more members deliver, and the more who want to join. The more they receive, the more drying beds they need. The more drying beds they build, the better their coffee gets, and the more premims they have to pay out. It’s a vicious, virtuous cycle.

Country Context

Coffee in Tanzania has always been split: Robusta in the northwest, centered in Kagera around Lake Victoria, and Arabica further east and south, from the slopes of Kilimanjaro down through the southern highlands of Mbeya and Mbinga. This dual structure, rooted in colonial-era plantings, shaped the way coffee moved through the country for decades—most notably through the centralized Moshi Coffee Auction, where all coffee had to be sold until 2018, perpetuating a bottleneck that forced farmers to travel long distances and limited their agency in marketing.

That year, the government dismantled the centralized auction and shifted to a regional model, while also prohibiting private exporters from buying cherry or parchment directly from farmers. Estates and Agricultural Marketing Co-operative Societies (AMCOS) became the only legal channels for smallholder coffee to reach market. For farmers—who produce more than 90% of Tanzania’s coffee—this was disruptive but also catalytic, pushing them into AMCOS that, by design, run lean and pass premiums back to members rather than administrators.

Processing, though, remains uneven. In the north, most coffee is delivered as Home Processed (HP) parchment—washed and dried at the household level—making quality and consistency harder to control. Kilimanjaro’s prominence has slipped: once more than half of Tanzania’s Arabica, by 2020 it accounted for less than one-fifth, as old trees, aging farmers, low premiums, and estate-friendly regulations eroded smallholder output. The Kilimanjaro Smallholder Revival Project, funded by the EU and local partners, is working to replant, re-engage younger farmers, and preserve the cultivars and profiles that made the region renowned.

In the south, by contrast, AMCOS more often purchase cherry and manage central wet mills, giving them greater control over fermentation, drying, and storage. Over the past two decades, this has expanded quality and diversity, positioning the southern highlands as the country’s most dynamic source.

Institutionally, reforms continue. The Tanzania Mercantile Exchange (TMX) is preparing to work alongside the Moshi Coffee Exchange, with the goal of improving price discovery and transparency in a system still adjusting to its decentralized model.