Leah Assenga is the founder of Kitamu Africa. With 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.
The African food recipes are passionately created by Leah the Kitamu founder using local and fresh products sourced from local farmers, Prepared and designed by qualified professional chefs with unbound experience. Kitamu’s food has conquered the heart of many with its unique taste and fresh avocados from Meru highlands to accompany your meal all year round.
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.
The overall objective of the Group is to increase the number of female coffee growers in Tanzania while, at the same time, providing them with a more sustainable and better quality of life, a cause she strongly believes in.
Young, driven by boundless curiosity and passion for all the things in the magic bean of coffee, Leah worked as a barista here in Tanzania where she garnered enough knowledge to be confident that she wanted to showcase the appeal of coffee. Her vision was further sharpened in the 12 weeks program of the Young African Leadership Initiative (YALI) where Only 96 out of 2,000 applicants for the course were accepted, Leah was proud to be part of it gaining extensive skills and motivation upon her return.
Despite Arusha and the whole Northern circuit being a center for tourism in Tanzania and surrounded by some of the best coffee plantations in the world, there are very few coffee shops here owned and managed by Tanzanians, which makes Kitamu one of the very few Tanzanian owned coffee shops, and more impressive owned and managed by a woman.
When the idea of setting up a café in Arusha was taking shape, Leah tried different recipes on her friends where only the best made it to the final menu. Leah’s renowned cake-making skills with the home help of Joyce who is also a very talented chef left many with one word to be heard time and again: ‘kitamu’ (Swahili for ‘delicious’).
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’.
