From Ethiopia to Nairobi: How One Trainer Is Expanding Coffee Education Across East Africa

Sara Yirga just completed her first regional training outside Ethiopia. It won't be her last.

There's something significant about crossing a border to teach what you love.

For Sara Yirga—Q-Grader, SCA Authorized Specialty Trainer, and longtime advocate for women in coffee—that moment arrived in February 2026 in Nairobi, Kenya. Hosted by Utake Coffee and organized by Mbula Musau, Sara led an intermediate-level roasting skills training through the SCA Coffee Skills Program, bringing world-class specialty coffee education to a new regional audience.

The course, held February 17–19 at Bluebells Gardens in Syokimau, marked something more than a training event. It was a signal.

Why This Matters

Specialty coffee education has historically been concentrated in consuming countries—Europe, North America, Japan. The knowledge flows one direction: from buyer markets back to origin.

Sara Yirga is part of a generation changing that dynamic.

Based in Ethiopia—the birthplace of coffee itself—Sara has built her career at the intersection of coffee expertise and international development. As a Q-Instructor and ESG consultant, she understands that the most powerful thing you can do for origin communities isn't just to pay more for their beans. It's to equip producers, processors, and industry professionals with the skills to understand and articulate their own value.

That's what an SCA Roasting Skills course at the intermediate level does. It builds technical fluency. It creates a shared language between origin and market. And when the trainer is a woman from Ethiopia bringing that knowledge to Kenya, it does something else entirely.

It shows what's possible.

The Network Behind the Work

This training didn't happen in a vacuum.

It happened because Utake Coffee—an SCA Premier Training Campus—created the infrastructure for it. Because Mbula Musau organized and hosted it. Because the International Women's Coffee Alliance has spent more than two decades building a network where collaborations like this are not only possible, they're expected.

Sara acknowledged all of this in her own words: "Grateful for Utake Coffee and Mbula Musau for organizing this opportunity & hosting the Specialty Coffee Training."

That gratitude points to something important. Great training doesn't happen through individual effort alone. It happens through networks that trust each other enough to share stages, resources, and audiences across borders.

Education as Empowerment

For IWCA, Sara's work in Nairobi is exactly the kind of story our network exists to amplify.

When women with deep expertise in coffee bring that knowledge across borders, they're not just teaching roasting skills. They're modeling leadership. They're proving that expertise lives at origin. They're creating pathways for the next generation of women coffee professionals to see themselves as trainers, instructors, and industry shapers—not just producers.

One training. Multiple students. Countless ripple effects.

That's what investing in women in coffee actually looks like.

Sara Yirga is an SCA Authorized Specialty Trainer (AST), Q-Grader, and Q-Instructor based in Ethiopia. She is a member of Women in Coffee Ethiopia, an IWCA chapter.

Utake Coffee is an SCA Premier Training Campus based in Nairobi, Kenya. Mbula Masau is a member of IWCA Kenya chapter.