A cool cloudy day in Nairobi. Yesterday we sent three entries from our groups to the East African Fine Coffee Association 'Cup of Excellence' competition. These coffees will be tasted by a panel of qualified assessors, or cuppers, who will check on the quality. The coffees deemed good enough will then go forward to the final stages of the competition in Kigali, Rwanda, next month. For our groups recognition at this level will allow them to negotiate hard for better prices for their coffee.

For our project this competition will be a measure of how successful our intervention has been in improving the coffee during the wet processing. In the past these three groups had good, but not outstanding coffee. They farm at high altitude, 1700 m above sea level or higher, and have excellent soils and rainfall and should be able to produce really good coffee.

This morning I also received the results of this week's auction at the Nairobi Coffee Exchange. Prices are firm, and very good for better qualities, despite the 'crunch' in the major consuming countries. So keep drinking good coffe out there!

This evening I will be travelling to Ethiopia for meetings in Addis Ababa. Ethiopia is the home of arabica cofee and the coffee culture is really amazing. Ethiopians drink freshly roasted coffee every time they have a cup! This can be several times a day, even for poor villagers. It is a few years since I was in Ethiopia so it will be very interesting to see what has happened. As in most African countries there is a building boom and I expect the skyline to look somewaht different.