# “If there were no coffee, I would be nobody.”

Twelve women, united by courage and by the memory of a legacy, created Café de Amboim – under the Impossible Coffees brand.

In the Café de Amboim lot enters the story of how Rui Nabeiro set out for Angola in 1975, in the opposite direction of the Portuguese who were returning. It includes the leading role of the Grupo Nabeiro in the late 1990s and the turn of the century, in the recovery of the coffee industry in Angola, devastated after decades of civil war. And it includes the Impossible Coffees project, dedicated to launching limited editions of rare and sustainable coffees in partnership with local producers and institutions. But above all, it includes the story of the 12 Angolan women who joined forces to keep coffee production alive in the province of Amboim.

“This coffee is a tribute to the strength and determination of the women of the Associação de Mulheres Empreendedoras do Amboim,” said Rui Miguel Nabeiro, at the launch of this special lot from the Cuanza-Sul region: Café de Amboim. The new edition of Impossible Coffees reaches the market after series dedicated to coffee from the Azores archipelago and from the island of São Tomé. This coffee, said the CEO of Grupo Nabeiro, “is the result of the courage of 12 women who turned adversity into opportunity, keeping production in the region alive and preserving a coffee that is unique in the world.”

## Robust tradition

For Delta, Angola was already more than just one of the many international markets where the company is present. “It is an extension of our identity,” he stressed. In 1975, the country was the fourth largest coffee producer in the world, with an annual output of 200,000 tonnes. It was even the largest source of green coffee for Delta. It is no coincidence, either, that the consumption of robusta coffee has a long tradition in Portugal, to the detriment of arabica varieties. These are acquired tastes and, once rooted, they remain.

Aware of how the national market depended on Angolan production and foreseeing major political changes in the country, Rui Nabeiro went to Angola in 1975, when most Portuguese people were travelling in the opposite direction. He secured something essential for the future of Delta Cafés: he ensured tens of thousands of sacks of coffee. In the aftermath of Angola’s independence, Delta had its warehouses full.

In the late 1990s, the Angolan government approached Delta Cafés about the possibility of revitalising a production unit. This led to the rehabilitation and modernisation of a factory that had been inactive since 1984 and to the creation of Angonabeiro, a Grupo Nabeiro company that operates in Angola.

As for the Impossible Coffees, they are much more than coffee. They are a unique project in entrepreneurship and social activism – driven by Clara Melícias, B2C director at Grupo Nabeiro, created exclusively for [Delta The Coffee House Experience](https://deltacoffeehouse.com/en/) – that shares the stories of people who have always believed in themselves and in their dreams. The result is a collection of rare coffees, sourced from micro-productions in several regions of the world, such as the editions dedicated to the Azores (Café dos Açores) and São Tomé (Café Catoninho).

## The courageous coffee of 12 women

The third edition of Impossible Coffees is dedicated to Amboim. “It is a very specific coffee from Angola, from the Cuanza Sul region,” says Joana Miranda, marketing director at Angonabeiro, who followed this project locally. The project is also a celebration of stories of perseverance and resilience. “It was produced by 12 women who joined forces and formed the Associação de Mulheres Empreendedoras do Amboim to keep coffee production alive in this region, because, with the war, coffee production was forgotten, as were other forms of production that used to exist here.”

This is, then, a story shaped by courage, willpower, and great resilience, led by women who fight every day against adversity and who came together at a time when the promotion of culture was under threat from the effects of the colonial war, the lack of financial resources, and the shortage of labour. “Many are widows and live in very precarious conditions,” says the marketeer. “But with the support of Delta, and also of the Instituto Nacional do Café de Angola, they managed to turn their ambition into a unique women-led entrepreneurship project, through which they support their community by producing coffee. It is the coffee of courage of Angolan women – that is how we define it.”

Lucinda Cunha is one of these women. A coffee producer, she is also responsible for the group of women entrepreneurs in Amboim. “Our connection to coffee goes back a long way, already from the time of our grandparents. We inherited this legacy from our parents, and we do not want to lose this identity – also because coffee has already built cities and has meant a lot to us. We do not want to lose that,” she stresses. “When a person has shed blood on a piece of land, they do not want to give it up for nothing.”

This feeling of resilience, of not giving up – “because they still carry within them the pain of the war” – became clear to Gildo Mariano, CEO and founder of Team Films, the Angolan production company responsible for the photographs and promotional films for this Impossible Coffee, when he visited some of these women on their farms in Amboim. The municipality, in the province of Cuanza Sul in Angola, with its seat in the city of Gabela, is a historic coffee-growing region, with families who have devoted themselves to this crop for several generations. It is also a region where, as Gildo discovered, time is in fact very relative: “They would say that the next farm was 5 minutes away, but then it was almost an hour!”

Gildo explains that the fact many of these women no longer have their husbands – “because many lost their lives in the war we had in Angola” – is an extra reason for them not to give up and to keep working the land as best they can, with all the risks involved.

What impressed him most was the fearlessness with which those women led the work on the farms. “We are talking about men who are former military, but who listened to and respected the women producers.” Gildo remembers a woman telling him that she had taken the reins of the farm since her husband’s death. She told him: “Here I play the man’s role. I walk with my stick, which is a cane, but at the right moment it becomes a whip.” And he concludes: “They are strong women, resilient, determined.”

## The new impossible lot

“That is why we remain in coffee production,” says Lucinda Cunha, stressing that in Angola it is not only men who work with coffee. “We have young women, older women. We are all connected to coffee. It is already in our blood.”

The Café de Amboim in the Impossible Coffees edition is being sold in Portugal by Delta Cafés. And how does it perform in the cup? When it was placed on a tasting table, Adelino Cardoso, coordinator of the Campo Maior roastery, reacted by praising its flavour, density, and creaminess, “with unique aromatic notes, neutral yet present and striking, together with notes of bitter cocoa and nuts.” “What an excellent coffee!”, he remarked.

With each sale, 20% of the amount goes to the Associação de Mulheres Empreendedoras do Amboim. At the beginning of summer, the funds raised had already exceeded 10,000 euros, an amount that will make it possible to increase support for revitalising the coffee value chain in the region. In addition to financial support – used to buy machetes, hire labour, or even purchase land – there is another very important form of support: training and knowledge sharing. “They learn, on their own land, cultivation techniques and how to identify when the coffee is at the right point to be harvested,” explains Joana Miranda. “Naturally, some already produce and deliver green coffee to us, but others are still starting out. Therefore, this is not a project with a time frame of one or two years; it will have to be longer, because if we plant a coffee plant now, it will only start producing fully in five years’ time.”

In short, just as the plant needs time to grow before it yields the green coffee bean, the support protocol for sustainable development in the region will also need time before it bears fruit. Rui Miguel Nabeiro said: “More and more, we are proving that, in fact, nothing is impossible for us. This project, in particular, is truly inspiring. It is a project of 12 women who had to build their own path in life, as we often say. And they decided to make coffee their way of life – so it has everything to do with us.”