GORONGOSA, Mozambique – In 2015, the Gorongosa Project worked with a group of local farmers to plant coffee seedlings on Mount Gorongosa. At first, 15,000 seedlings were planted alongside native trees to support rainforest reforestation efforts. Today, Mount Gorongosa’s people are planting around 200,000 coffee trees per year, and 50,000 rainforest trees per year alongside them.
In communities of primarily subsistence farmers, Gorongosa Coffee enables local workers to put food on their tables and send their children to school – all while supporting their surrounding ecosystem. 100% of the Gorongosa Coffee profits go back to Gorongosa National Park and its people. Every bag of coffee directly supports the mission to serve Gorongosa National Park and the communities that surround it.
In 2014, as part of its AAA Sustainable Quality Program, Nespresso has launched the Reviving Coffees platform with the objective to revive high quality coffee production in regions where it was under threat and improving quality and increasing volume crop after crop.
The Reviving Coffees platform aims to creating shared value, and be inclusive, by supporting development in local communities, increase income, livelihoods, and resilience, towards climate change. Procuring these coffees every year, and allowing its productions to grow, its communities to prosper, is part of the impact NESPRESSO expects to see through the collaboration with Gorongosa National Park.
The purpose of this Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) is to affirm the intent of both parties to jointly collaborate in order to improve coffee farmers livelihoods by rebuilding and promoting the coffee industry in the Gorongosa region, in Mozambique. The ongoing joint strategy aims to include Mozambique in the Nespresso’s global Reviving Origins Program.
About Nespresso’s AAA Program
In 2003 Nespresso launched the AAA Program to help producers improving their practices to achieve better quality, sustainable coffee but also to increase farmers’ interest through transparent trading conditions and to reassure its final customers that the highest agricultural and social standards and practices are being followed in origin countries.
About the Gorongosa Project
Gorongosa National Park (GNP) in Mozambique is perhaps Africa’s greatest wildlife restoration story. In 2008 a 20-year Public-Private Partnership was established for the joint management of GNP between the Government of Mozambique and the Carr Foundation (Gorongosa Project), a US nonprofit organization. In 2016 the Government of Mozambique approved the extension for another 25 years of joint management.
By adopting a 21st Century conservation model of balancing the needs of wildlife and people, Gorongosa is protecting and saving this beautiful wilderness, returning it to its rightful place as one of Africa’s greatest national parks.
GNP has been described as one of the most diverse parks on Earth, covering a vast expanse of 400,000 hectares. In recent years, the Gorongosa Project, with the support of Mozambique’s National Administration of Conservation Areas (ANAC), has ensured the protection of a recovering population of Lions in this system, successfully reduced key threats, and seen the Park recognized as one of National Geographic’s “Last Wild Places” and by TIME Magazine as one of the “World’s Greatest Places – 2019”.
