Coffee on a spice island
It would be easy to assume that coffee in Zanzibar is an afterthought — something that arrived with tourism and takes the form of a cappuccino served to hotel guests. The reality is considerably more interesting. Zanzibar has its own coffee tradition rooted in centuries of Swahili and Arab cultural exchange, shaped by the same spice trade that defined the island's economic and cultural identity. To drink coffee in Zanzibar is, in the best instances, to taste that history.
The Swahili word for coffee is kahawa, and it shares a root with the Arabic qahwa — a reminder that coffeehouses and coffee culture spread from the Arabian Peninsula into East Africa via exactly the maritime trade routes that made Zanzibar significant. By the time Oman's Sultanate established its capital in Zanzibar in 1832, the habit of drinking coffee was already well established among the Arab and Swahili populations of the coast.
Street coffee: the brass pot tradition
The most traditional form of coffee in Zanzibar is made and sold on the street, from a large brass or aluminium urn carried on the seller's back or set on a small stand. These coffee sellers — a fixture in Stone Town for generations — brew their coffee with spices, most commonly cardamom, and sometimes with ginger and cloves as well. The result is poured into small ceramic cups and drunk quickly, strong and aromatic, either unsweetened or with a small amount of sugar.
The coffee itself is typically a dark roast brewed to a concentrated intensity. The cardamom rounds the bitterness and adds a floral, citrusy note. The small cup size is not incidental — this is coffee as a brief ritual and a social moment, not a beverage you nurse for half an hour. The seller moves through a neighbourhood or a market, the cups are rinsed and reused, and the transaction is quick and informal.
These street sellers are most active in the early morning, concentrated around the Darajani market and the residential quarters of Stone Town. Finding them rewards a deliberate early start — by mid-morning many have finished their rounds.
Spices in the cup
What distinguishes kahawa from a generic strong coffee is the spicing, and in Zanzibar — the Spice Island — this has particular meaning. The cloves, cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, and black pepper that are grown in Zanzibar's interior do not stay in the kitchen. They find their way into drinks of all kinds.
Cardamom (iliki in Swahili) is the most common coffee spice. Ground cardamom is added during brewing, and the quantity varies by the seller and the tradition — some versions are subtly perfumed, others are intensely aromatic. Ginger (tangawizi) is a close second, sometimes used in coffee and always available separately as a drink in its own right. A cup of tangawizi — hot water steeped with fresh or dried ginger, sometimes with a little sugar and lemon — is one of the island's foundational beverages, drunk as a morning pick-up, a digestive, or simply because it tastes good. It has a sharp, clean warmth that is quite different from the ginger-flavoured products that have become fashionable elsewhere.
Cloves are occasionally added to spiced coffee or tea, though they are more assertive than cardamom and used with a lighter hand.
Tea and the chai tradition
Coffee is not the only hot drink in Zanzibar. Chai — spiced tea, also shaped by South Asian influence via the large Indian trading community that settled in Zanzibar from the nineteenth century onward — is ubiquitous. Spiced milk tea, brewed strongly with whole spices and sweetened, is the standard breakfast drink in many households and local cafes. The South Asian chai tradition and the Arab spiced coffee tradition exist side by side without contradiction.
Lemongrass tea and other herbal infusions made from plants grown on the island are served in some cafes, particularly those catering to visitors interested in the spice heritage.
Coffee in Stone Town today
Beyond the street sellers, Stone Town has developed a small cafe scene that reflects both local tradition and outside influence. Several cafes around the Forodhani area and in the main Stone Town thoroughfares serve kahawa alongside more familiar espresso-based drinks. The best of these cafes use locally produced or regionally sourced East African coffee — Tanzania is a significant coffee producer, with Kilimanjaro and Kagera among its main growing regions — and the Zanzibar connection to spice gives the local cafe culture a specific character.
Some spice tour operators and spice-focused establishments in and around Stone Town offer coffee tastings as part of a broader exploration of the island's spice heritage. This is a good way to understand the relationship between the spice trade and daily life on the island, and to try several variations of spiced coffee in a single sitting.
The Darajani market and its surrounding streets are the most authentic place to experience coffee as it has been drunk in Stone Town for generations. An early morning walk through the market, with a small cup of cardamom-spiced kahawa from a street seller, is one of the quieter and more genuinely local pleasures available in Zanzibar.
