Before she ever roasted a single coffee bean, Eva Muthuuri was a gender, policy advocacy, and institutional strengthening consultant who spent years working across Kenya and the continent.
Her work exposed her to one truth that cut across geography and circumstance: the face of poverty in Africa is often that of a woman: young, unskilled, overburdened, and structurally excluded, yet still the backbone of the household economy.
It was this reality that drove Eva to act. She saw how women, despite holding families and communities together, were locked out of value chains, financial systems, and the opportunities needed to thrive. Coffee, Kenya’s pride crop, was no exception. Women carried much of the labour but captured very little of the value.
Driven by a desire to reclaim value for Kenyan women, especially women farmers and to build a model of economic empowerment rooted in dignity, ownership, and community transformation, Eva turned to her roots and established Eva’s Coffee. Hailing from the foothills of Meru, she grew up in a coffee farming homestead and witnessed firsthand how this cultural staple was synonymous with a male-dominated industry.
What began as a personal mission soon grew into a wider movement. Leaving public health for agriculture was a bold shift, but Eva started with what she had: her savings, the ability to write a grant proposal, and an unshakeable belief in the potential of women farmers. Her savings paid for licences and branding, while grants helped her mobilise farmers, create male champions, and develop training manuals that grounded the business in community-led empowerment.
Assets were built along the way. A chance encounter with the owner of Behmor, the Guatemalan roaster company, led to the donation of a roaster and grinder. Vendors stepped in to provide accessible equipment, and when demand outgrew the team’s processing capacity, Eva outsourced to partners with deeper pockets. Yet the early days were not without resistance. Entering a competitive, male-dominated, and often monopolistic industry meant dealing with scepticism and, at times, outright bullying. Questions like “Who is this lady?” and “Where is she coming from?” were common. But women farmers believed in her vision. They recognised the honesty of her ambition: a future where their work translated into true value and better livelihoods.
For Eva, the business was never just about coffee. It was, in her own words, “a protection mechanism” a way to use the power of the women’s movement to drive economic agency through the coffee value chain. It brought together women farmers, captains of industry, and capital partners to unlock productivity, competitiveness, and economic resilience. It offered women a pathway out of informality and exclusion, and into structures that supported them to thrive. In a context where population growth outpaces economic growth, households often spend more than they earn, deepening cycles of instability, gender-based violence, and generational poverty. Women bear the brunt of these challenges, and Eva’s Coffee set out to change that one farm, one family, one woman, at a time.
Afreximbank (the ‘Bank’) entered Eva’s journey at a pivotal point. Through its partnership with ImpactHER, the Bank co-developed ShowcaseHER, a programme designed to equip women-led SMEs with business development skills, export readiness, networks, and market access. For Eva, ShowcaseHER became a launchpad.
The programme opened doors that had long been shut through export development training, branding support, and investor exposure. She began exporting while still undergoing the programme, accessing markets that had previously felt out of reach. Afreximbank’s support helped refine her business model, strengthen value addition, and build a globally competitive brand that keeps value within Kenya instead of exporting raw coffee with limited return to farmers.
This partnership reflects Afreximbank’s broader commitment to nurturing Africa’s MSMEs. In 2024 alone, the Bank disbursed US$18.7 billion in financing, including 111 trade finance lines enabling more than 127,000 SME sub-loans across 27 countries reaching women, youth, and high-impact ventures across the continent.
Today, Eva’s Coffee produces more than one million kilogrammes of coffee annually and exports to markets worldwide without expanding its land by a single acre. More than 60 farms, mostly women-led, are thriving under Eva’s mentorship. Families are feeding their children, paying school fees, and investing in their futures, all powered by a crop they once viewed simply as subsistence.
The enterprise continues to grow through partnerships in sustainability, seedbeds and nurseries, climate-resilient farming, and a youth coffee-kiosk franchise model that brings young people into the value chain. Eva’s Coffee has also been recognised by the 2025 African Women Achievers as one of the continent’s top women-led initiatives advancing economic empowerment.
What began as a trading business has now evolved into a vehicle for systems change strengthening value chains, transforming livelihoods, and redefining what women in agriculture can achieve when the right support meets determined ambition.
Eva’s journey embodies Afreximbank’s vision for SME transformation across Africa: enabling micro-businesses to become SMEs, SMEs to scale into mid-sized companies, and mid-sized firms to evolve into global players. This is the ripple effect that powers sustainable economic change.
From her first handwritten postcard to a potential buyer to seeing her coffee served in cafés across continents, Eva’s story is rich with purpose and possibility. As she often says, “the spirit of coffee unites humanity.” Through Afreximbank’s commitment to empowering Africa’s MSMEs, that spirit is spreading one woman, one farm, and one community at a time.
