‘It’s Rude Not to Offer Three Cups’: The Lengthy, Beloved Coffee Rituals Binding Ethiopians Together

In Ethiopia, coffee is a staple in daily life, with the ritual of sharing coffee being central to daily life. Hagre Bekele, a farmer in Kafa, begins by roasting raw green beans over an open fire and grinding them by hand before brewing them in a jebena, a bulbous, long-necked clay pot. The drink is ready when it boils and almost overflows, served alongside thick chunks of bread and handfuls of roasted grains, a snack called kolo. Hagre also burns incense to enhance the coffee’s taste and some believe it keeps bad spirits away.

The process lasts about an hour, and to make things more efficient, Hagre shares brewing duties with her neighbors. Hagre is in charge of the lunchtime coffee, while her neighbor, Woynitu Gebre, takes care of the morning round. In the evening, everyone goes to Hagre’s mother-in-law’s. This system has been in place for decades and is replicated in various forms in millions of homes every day across Ethiopia.

The ritual of sharing coffee is central to daily life, a chance to discuss news, plan farm work, and share village gossip. If people are depressed, it helps lift them, says Woynitu. However, not everyone thinks hours drinking coffee are well spent. Bogale Desalegn, who lives a short walk away, disapproves of the ritual of sharing coffee, saying it takes up too much time and is better to work. He still drinks about four cups a day.

Ethiopia is the fifth-largest producer of coffee worldwide, with 5 million coffee-growing farmers producing half a million tonnes of beans a year. Coffee is the country’s largest export and employs about 25% of the population directly or indirectly. Coffee has made Kafa a wealthy place, and the region claims to be the birthplace of the Arabica bean.

Coffee then spread from Ethiopia’s monasteries to the Islamic world and eventually to Europe, according to the story. Today, highly ritualized coffee ceremonies are a central pillar of Ethiopian weddings, funerals, and religious celebrations, part of a shared social fabric that helps to bind together a geographically vast and culturally diverse country of about 120 million people. Women brewing coffee in jebenas set on charcoal stoves are ubiquitous in Ethiopia’s cities, present on almost every street corner.

Western-style coffee shops serving milky macchiatos are increasingly popular, serving Ethiopia’s fast-growing professional class, who do not have time to make traditional coffee at home. Tomoca, which specializes in darkly roasted beans, has more than 20 branches and is the closest thing Ethiopia has to Starbucks. Tesfamichael Wolde, an accountant drinking coffee at a downtown Addis Ababa branch of Tomoca, says that when he was growing up in Gurage, his family would share coffee-making duties with seven other families. Now, though, he mostly drinks coffee outside his home because of the fast pace of city life.

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