The Makwa AA is grown in in Thika District, North East of the capital Nairobi. The Makwa Estate is owned by “Chania Location Mwahota Ikai Co Ltd”, who started coffee farming in 1975. The farm is at an altitude of 1,600m, extends over 92 hectares and produces approx. 120 tons of coffee per year.

Coffee at Makwa is wet processed. Red ripe cherry are harvested from the fields. This is then disc-pulped immediately (within 6-8 hours of harvest) and fermented to breakdown the mucilage. When fermentation is complete the parchment is washed with clean water, graded and spread onto raised beds for drying. While sun drying all defective beans are removed by hand.

Kenya is the 16th largest coffee producer in the world by volume and is recognised today as a prominent specialty coffee origin. Growing regions in the country (especially its central highlands) offer rich, acidic soil, and optimal conditions for specialty coffee production. The country produces an average of 750,000 bags of coffee per year and relies heavily on smallholder farmers, as the average farm size in Kenya is just one to two hectares. Many farms grow an average of 150 coffee trees and take their cherries to centrally located mills where their coffees are weighed, sorted and combined into batches large enough for processing and export.