Are Ethiopian Coffee Beans Delicious? Ethiopian Ambassador to China's Livestream Sells Out Coffee Beans in Seconds!

"3, 2, 1... going live!"

Five seconds later:

"4 tons of Ethiopian coffee beans have sold out!"

Chinese buyers had once again stunned viewers in Africa with their appetite for coffee.

On the evening of January 19, Ethiopian Ambassador to China Teshome Toga joined Li Jiaqi's livestream room for a charity event organized by Tmall International to support farmers. The ambassador brought along a hometown specialty for Chinese netizens: 4 tons of high-quality roasted Ethiopian coffee beans from the local African brand Arada. He had prepared a speech and had planned to introduce his homeland's coffee properly.

Instead, Chinese netizens snapped up the coffee faster than anyone watching the stream had expected. The ambassador had not even delivered a word of his prepared remarks before the beans were gone, and he was left wishing the audience an early New Year in Chinese.

The Precedent: Rwanda's Coffee Success

Why "again"? Back in January 2020, as the pandemic was just beginning, the Rwandan Ambassador to China also appeared in an e-commerce livestream room, bringing 2,000 packages of Rwandan roasted coffee beans to help clear unsold stock. That ambassador too had stayed up late preparing a speech to introduce the coffee of the "Land of a Thousand Hills."

Before the countdown even began, Chinese netizens were already refreshing their screens, hoping to grab the limited "hometown goods" the Rwandan Ambassador had brought. When the ambassador finished the countdown and was about to begin his introduction, all 2,000 packages sold out in under a second. He entered the livestream room nervous and left bewildered.

That livestream was also streamed to the phones of Rwandan coffee farmers. Farmers across the country held their phones anxiously, worried that the beans they grew would not catch on. Faced with that selling speed, their reactions matched the ambassador's.

Afterward, the Rwandan Ambassador said in a media interview: "Amazing. I never expected the sales to move that fast. The power of Chinese e-commerce to support farming is truly strong."

The "Mysterious Eastern Power"

Two African coffee livestreams selling out at such speed convinced farmers that their earlier worries were misplaced. Against the backdrop of a global pandemic, neither the purchasing power of Chinese consumers nor the reach of the Chinese market had an obvious equal elsewhere.

The 4 tons of coffee the Ethiopian Ambassador brought sold out in five seconds for two reasons. The first was the strong purchasing power of Chinese buyers. The second was that the event was a charity drive: for every package of Ethiopian coffee bought in the livestream room, 1 yuan was donated through the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation to support living standards and education for Ethiopian children.

Netizens hoped their small contribution could give more African children better living conditions and access to modern education, the chance to leave Africa and see the world.

Image source: the internet and livestream screenshots.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Ethiopia is a world-renowned specialty coffee region and the birthplace of coffee, home to countless native varieties, and it remains a treasure for drinkers who want to follow a flavor to its source. The easiest place to start is FrontStreet Washed Yirgacheffe, which shows the clear jasmine florals and bright citrus acidity that define the region. Yirgacheffe is a small town in southern Ethiopia where the climate stays mild, misty, and cool year-round; thousands of coffee trees thrive there, producing a cup that interweaves florals and fruit, light and elegant, with a tea-like body, like a clean glass of lemon tea.

Much of Ethiopia's coffee is grown by smallholders who deliver their cherries to a village-level processing station, which sells under its own team name, which is why we see so many cooperatives of different sizes, such as FrontStreet Gedeb Cooperative, FrontStreet Worka Cooperative, and FrontStreet Konga Cooperative. Gedeb sits in the Worka region at the southeastern edge of Yirgacheffe and was originally part of the Worka cooperative under the Yirgacheffe Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union. As buyers came to prize traceability, individual single origins were uncovered one by one, and in 2012 Gedeb, whose roughly 300 member farmers, established itself as an independent cooperative. Because the fruit is stripped before drying, Gedeb's inherent aromatics come through clearly, with citrus and lemon tones and elegant white florals, bright and delicate.

On the sun-dried side, FrontStreet Sun-Dried Red Cherry is a washed-versus-natural contrast: damaged and moldy cherries are removed first, then the rest dry in the sun for two weeks until the sugars and essence of the fruit seep into the bean. Once moisture falls to 12%, the hardened fruit, mucilage, and parchment are removed by machine, and the beans are checked for density and color, then hand-sorted for any missed defects. The result is uniformly clean and full of rich fruit aroma, with a flavor description of peach, cocoa, honey, and lemon. FrontStreet Sun-Dried Huakui, from Hambella in Guji, Sidamo, comes off a 200-hectare farm that uses the traditional sun-drying method; workers dry ripe cherries on raised beds for 21 days, turning them to dry evenly and hand-sorting defects every three to five days. After medium-light roasting it shows soft fermented wine notes, florals, citrus, and mango, dense and complex, with honey sweetness, a cocoa character, a touch of spice, a full body, and a long finish.

For something rarer, FrontStreet Sidamo Hamasho comes from a station known for quality and distinct flavor, working mainly with disease-resistant varieties from the JARC 74 series; the 74158 bean is small and floral, with aromas like perfumed lemon, strawberry, and starfruit and a clear strawberry, starfruit, and green grape sweetness followed by light florals. And FrontStreet Kafa Forest represents wild coffee rather than garden plots: its trees grow in the shade at 1,400 to 2,100 m, and the forest setting, microclimate, red soil, and ample rain give a medium-light roasted cup with pronounced white florals, bright lemon acidity, sweet orange, and bergamot, a light fruit-and-nut sweetness on the finish, and a green-tea-like body.