Nairobi Coffee Exchange trade jumps 27% in a week

Kenya's Nairobi Coffee Exchange traded 16,994 bags of coffee for 860.3 million shillings ($6.6m) at its September 15 sale, a 27% jump in value from the previous week.

Growers and marketing agents brought 1,048,871 kilograms of green coffee to the Nairobi Coffee Exchange floor, up from 835,633 kilograms a week earlier. The average price held at $316.64 per 50-kilogram bag, only slightly above the $312.10 average from the prior sale.

Nairobi Coffee Exchange volumes climb

Nairobi's coffee floor just had its best week in months, and nobody has quite explained why.

Sale 39, on September 8, moved 13,484 bags for 675.2 million shillings. Sale 40 pushed both figures up by roughly a quarter within seven days, according to figures compiled by Sacco Review from exchange data.

Grade AA lots fetched the best prices, averaging $358.52 per bag across 2,212 bags. Grade AB made up the bulk of the floor at 7,027 bags, averaging $350.63. Prices ranged from $52 to $408 per bag, a spread wide enough to reward the same premium grades that drove a record London auction for Congolese coffee this month.

New Kenya Planters Co-operative Union handled the largest share, selling 5,804 bags worth $2.3m at an average of $325.22 per bag. Ibero Kenya Ltd was the top buyer, taking 3,859 bags off the floor.

The gains follow a rough patch for the Nairobi Coffee Exchange. Prices there had fallen to $268.77 per bag in April, down 28.4% from October 2025, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report on the Kenyan crop.

Kenya's coffee sector resets its rules

Kenya's Coffee Act, enacted in March, moved oversight from the Agriculture and Food Authority to a re-established Coffee Board of Kenya and created a separate Coffee Research and Training Institute. Production for the 2026/27 season is forecast to rise nearly 12% to 950,000 bags.

Exports are expected to climb from 840,000 to 940,000 bags over the same period, with the United States, Belgium and Germany as the largest buyers. The Nairobi Coffee Exchange holds its next auction, Sale 41, on September 23.

A single week's swing this size says more about how thin recent trading had become than about a lasting recovery. Sale 41 will show whether growers keep bringing coffee to Nairobi at this pace.