Mensur Abahika and Nesru Aba Nura: Jimma's New Coffee Frontier
In the heart of Ethiopia's Jimma Zone – a region long overshadowed by the likes of Yirgacheffe and Sidamo – a quiet revolution is brewing. Mensur Abahika and his wife Nesru Aba Nura are part of a new generation of Ethiopian coffee farmers who are not only producing exceptional coffees but also reshaping how those coffees reach the world. Their farms sit side by side in the Kota Kebele of the Goma district, at 1,950–2,000 metres above sea level, and together they represent one of the most compelling stories in Ethiopian specialty coffee right now.
From Aggregation to Attribution
For most of Ethiopia's modern coffee history, individual farmers were invisible. Coffees were sold through cooperatives or regional washing stations, aggregated into regional lots, and exported under place names rather than people's names. Tracing a coffee back to the specific farm that grew it was, for the most part, impossible. Recent regulatory changes altered that fundamentally, allowing producers to export directly under their own names – opening the door to traceability, transparency, and recognition for individual excellence.
Mensur was among the very first to walk through that door. During the 2019/20 harvest, he became the first single-producer lot that our importing partner Osito purchased in Ethiopia following those legal reforms – a milestone that speaks to both his quality and his forward thinking. He's been central to everything that's followed.
Mensur Abahika
Mensur's 18-hectare farm in Kota Kebele has become something of a benchmark for what's achievable in Jimma. The region was long associated with lower-quality natural coffees, but Mensur's meticulous approach to drying, sorting, and – more recently – washed processing has helped redefine expectations. Since the 2022/23 harvest, Mensur and several other Tokuma producers have invested in the infrastructure needed to process washed lots as well as naturals, and the results have been striking. His farms operate under a semi-forested model with no synthetic or toxic agrochemicals, working with the landscape rather than against it.
The variety grown is JARC 74110 – a locally selected Ethiopian heirloom developed at the Jimma Agricultural Research Centre in the 1970s, following a devastating outbreak of coffee berry disease. Catalogued in 1974 and officially released in 1979, it was selected from a mother tree in the Bishari village of the Metu Province. The trees are short and compact with small leaves, cherries, and beans, and are valued for their disease resistance, reliable yields, and a cup profile that can be floral, juicy, and richly fruited when grown at altitude and processed well.
The Tokuma Farmers Group
Mensur is a founding member of the Tokuma Farmers Group – a collective of smallholder producers based in the Agaro region of Jimma, operating at altitudes between 1,950 and 2,200 metres above sea level. The group benefits from fertile soils, a temperate climate, and the biodiversity of surrounding forests that provide natural shade and ecological balance.
Originally formed to share agronomic practices and marketing strategies, Tokuma has evolved into a genuinely pioneering force in Ethiopia's coffee sector. Its members maintain full ownership of their coffee from cultivation to export, with every lot traceable back to the specific farm and harvest. Profits from direct trade relationships are reinvested into farm expansion, better post-harvest equipment, and local infrastructure. What the collective's shared approach has delivered, practically, is consistency: over the past several years, Osito has seen quality and cup scores improve year on year, alongside better reliability in getting coffees to port on time. That's not glamorous, but it matters enormously in a market where trust is everything.
Nesru Aba Nura
When Osito learned that Mensur's wife Nesru had secured her own export licence and her own plot of land, it was, in their words, cause to be "over the moon." It was a deliberate decision on their part to funnel growing demand into the Tokuma group – going deeper into existing relationships rather than spreading thinner across new ones. The result has been exactly what they hoped for.
Nesru's 9-hectare farm in Kota Kebele sits at the same impressive altitude as her husband's – 1,950–2,000 metres – with ideal conditions for slow cherry maturation and complex flavour development. Her coffees are dried on raised beds for an average of 21 days, a careful and unhurried process that preserves the integrity of the cherry and allows the natural sweetness to develop fully. We are now in our third year of buying from Nesru, and the coffees have been consistently exceptional. Her work is a testament not just to her own skill but to the growing role of women in Ethiopian coffee production and the increasing diversity of voices shaping the industry.
How Jimma Stands Apart
Yirgacheffe and Sidamo have long dominated the conversation around Ethiopian coffee, and for good reason. But Jimma is increasingly earning its own recognition, and the differences are worth understanding. Jimma's highlands range from 1,400 to 2,200 metres, with many farms in forested or semi-forested environments – a contrast to the more intensively cultivated garden-style farms common further south. Historically the region was associated with washed Limu coffees, but in 2009 Technoserve partnered with local cooperatives to introduce more rigorous washed processing and quality standards, and Jimma has since grown into one of Ethiopia's premier specialty regions. Producers like Mensur and Nesru represent the next chapter: single-producer naturals of a quality that previously seemed impossible here.
Jimma also holds a unique place in Ethiopia's coffee genetics. It's home to the Jimma Agricultural Research Centre, which was established specifically to respond to the coffee berry disease crisis of the 1960s, and which has since developed dozens of widely planted Ethiopian cultivars. The "74" varieties – including 74110 and 74112 – get their name from 1974, the year they were catalogued. Growing these varieties on farms where the JARC itself is a neighbour gives Mensur and Nesru a relationship with coffee science that's genuinely unusual, and you can taste the results in the cup.
