The monKaaba Initiative: Autonomy for Colombia's Smallholders

monKaaba was founded in 2019 by six smallholder farming families in San Agustín, Huila — and has grown by 2024 to encompass 80 families. The initiative was created by Esnaider Ortega Gómez, who spent ten years working for a coffee exporter and was repeatedly troubled by watching smallholder farmers have their coffee rejected without explanation. monKaaba's mission is to break down those barriers: giving producers access to specialty market pricing, teaching them how the supply chain works, building their knowledge of quality assessment, and supporting them toward full autonomy over their own coffee production.

The model works through a small bodega in San Agustín where coffees are assessed, processed for export, and blended into traceability-documentable lots. Semilla — a specialty importer — serves as the buying and financing partner, covering costs of the open-access cupping lab and paying salaries for the young producers working as roasters, accountants, and warehouse managers inside the operation.

SL28 in Colombia: Four Years From Seed to Export

SL28 is one of Kenya's most celebrated varieties — a product of the Scott Laboratories breeding programme of the 1930s–50s that produced the blackcurrant and red-fruit acidity that defines top Kenyan specialty coffee. Globally, SL28 is associated almost exclusively with Kenya; growing it successfully in Colombia is unusual and noteworthy. Esnaider and Augusto Ortega acquired the first SL28 seeds in 2020 and began planting them while distributing seeds to other Monkaaba members who wanted to add the variety to their portfolios.

Four years later — because new variety planting requires years of tree establishment before the first commercial harvest — the 2024 crop yielded the first exported Monkaaba SL28 lot. Producing it required combining the small harvests from four producers (Esnaider and Augusto Ortega, Damian Bolaños, and Jaime Burbano for the 2024 lot; with Pastor Ordoñez and Maria Alejandra Astudillo joining the 2025 blend) to achieve enough volume for export. That this community pooled four years of patience and investment to produce a single lot demonstrates exactly the kind of collective long-term commitment that monKaaba was built to enable.

"It took four years and combining the production from four harvests to have enough volume to create a substantial lot for exporting." — Rowan Coffee

The Cup: Kenya Characteristics in Colombian Terroir

The hallmark characteristics of SL28 — dark berries, blackcurrant, juicy citrus, and subtle florals — do carry through in San Agustín's high-altitude Huila terroir, according to multiple roasters who have carried the lot. The variety's genetic predisposition toward complex berry acidity, combined with San Agustín's 1,600–1,900 masl elevation range and volcanic soils, produces a Colombian washed coffee with an unmistakably Kenyan-adjacent character: bright, structured, and deeply fruited.

Roasters Carrying Monkaaba SL28

Brew Guide