The founder of Kitamu Africa, in Arusha, Tanzania, Leah Assenga, has won the coveted Africa Travel 100 Award which recognises exceptional women in the travel and tourism sector.
Assenga has sufficient knowledge and extensive experience on coffee, having roasted coffee, sold coffee, installed coffee machines, and set up coffee shops to international standards.
She also trained hotel staff on how to operate the coffee machines and make coffee in exclusive hotels within East and West Africa.
Leah is an active member of the International Women’s Coffee Alliance (IWCA) in Tanzania.
And also volunteering as a Quality control and sales representative for the Kiwakamori specialty Coffee Group, a member of the IWCA located in the Kibosho area in northern Tanzania that assists more than 25 women from this village who want to get started in coffee farming. to help the women establish a village-managed coffee nursery, producing seedlings distributed to the targeted women for planting on their self-owned farms.
When the café was finally opened (2017) – in a prime location on Goliondoi Street, moments from the Clock Tower, the city’s centerpiece – it had to be called Kitamu Coffee also famously known as “The cutest cafe in town” and for the customers who came in kept coming back and the ever-smiling Leah became ‘Mama Kitamu’.
