Basha Bekele
Basha Bekele is a smallholder coffee farmer in Bensa woreda, East Sidama, Ethiopia — “smallholder” meaning he farms a few hectares himself rather than running an estate with hired management. In 2024 his coffee won first place at the Ethiopia Cup of Excellence with a score of 90.50, and one half of the winning lot then sold at auction for $445 a pound: the highest price ever paid at a Cup of Excellence auction in any country (Alliance for Coffee Excellence — Ethiopia 2024, accessed 2026-07-23; Ethiopian Monitor, accessed 2026-07-23).
He is the reason the all-time COE record sits with Ethiopia rather than Central America, and one of the few record-holders in this wiki who is a farmer with a handful of plots rather than a well-known estate.
Story
The 2024 win
The Cup of Excellence is a national competition: farmers submit lots, juries cup them blind over several rounds, and the winners go to a public online auction. Ethiopia’s 2024 edition was judged during international jury week, 8–12 July 2024, with the auction held on 27 August 2024. Twenty-seven lots scored above 87 and became COE winners; another 13 scored 85 or above and were sold as National Winners (ACE — Ethiopia 2024, accessed 2026-07-23).
Basha’s coffee took the top spot at 90.50 points (on what that number means, see Coffee scoring). Because the harvest was larger than a single auction lot, it was split into two lots, 1A and 1B, which carry the same score and the same first-place ranking but were bid on separately (same source).
To verify
His surname. The official ACE results table lists the producer as simply “Basha” (ACE — Ethiopia 2024, accessed 2026-07-23). Roasters and trade press give a fuller name — Basha Bekele Botusha (Daily Coffee News) or Basha Bekele Butusha (James Gourmet Coffee) — which looks like a transliteration difference rather than two different people, but neither page could be fetched here (both returned HTTP 403 on 2026-07-23). “Basha Bekele” is the form used consistently by everyone including his own trading partners; the third name should not be published as settled.
The auction, lot by lot
| Lot | Score | Weight | Price | Total | Buyer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1A | 90.50 | 90 kg (198.42 lb) | $445.00/lb | $88,296.90 | Angelino’s Coffee (California, USA) |
| 1B | 90.50 | 105 kg (231.49 lb) | $350.10/lb | $81,044.65 | Orsir International Co. Ltd. and Saza Coffee |
All figures from the official results table (ACE — Ethiopia 2024, accessed 2026-07-23). Together the two lots — under 200 kg of coffee, about four ordinary sacks — brought $169,341.55.
The 980.64 per kilogram, about 103,000 birr**, and Ethiopian reporting described it explicitly as an all-time Cup of Excellence auction record globally, not merely an Ethiopian one. It beat the previous high of $884.10/kg, also an Ethiopian lot, bought by a UAE company in 2022. The Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority called it “a monumental achievement for Ethiopian coffee” (Ethiopian Monitor, accessed 2026-07-23).
For scale, the same auction sold all 27 winning lots for 24.64/lb. Basha’s lot went for eighteen times that average (same source). The full ledger of who holds which national record is on Cup of Excellence records by country.
To verify
Saza Coffee’s exact role in lot 1B. ACE names “Orsir International Co. Ltd., SAZA COFFEE” together as the buyer, and the trade press reported the winning bid as Taiwan’s Orsir International. Whether Saza was a co-bidder in a buying consortium or a roaster who took a share afterwards is not stated anywhere consulted here.
To verify
“Presidential Award.” Café Kreyol describes Basha as one of two Presidential Award winners at Ethiopia 2024 (Café Kreyol, accessed 2026-07-23) — the tier commonly said to be reserved for lots scoring 90 or above. That is consistent with the ACE table, where exactly two producers cleared 90 (Basha at 90.50 and a producer listed as “Mate” at 90.13), but the Cup of Excellence site published no definition of award tiers or score thresholds when checked on 2026-07-23. Treat the award name as a reported claim, not an official one.
What the coffee actually was
The winning lot was natural process — the whole cherry is dried around the bean rather than the fruit being washed off first, which pushes the cup towards fruit and fermented sweetness. ACE’s results describe the winning coffees as naturally processed and predominantly the Ethiopian cultivar 74158, a variety released by the Jimma Agricultural Research Center; the roasters selling Basha’s coffee list it as JARC 74158, natural (ACE — Ethiopia 2024, accessed 2026-07-23; James Gourmet Coffee, Philo Coffee and Mazelab Coffee product pages, via research report).
This was not a fluke of one lot. Industry writer Christopher Feran noted that the Ethiopia 2024 top 30 contained not a single washed or anaerobic lot — an unusual result in a country long identified with washed coffee (Christopher Feran, via research report). A producer visit describes Basha as using shade drying, keeping cherries out of direct sun on the beds to slow the dry-down (Omwani, accessed 2026-07-23).
To verify
The altitude of the winning lot. Roasters selling coffee from Basha publish three different numbers — 2,360 m (James Gourmet), 2,215 m (Philo Coffee) and a range of 1,500–2,200 m (Oak Cliff) — all via the research report, none fetched. These probably describe different plots or different years rather than contradicting each other, but no figure for the actual competition lot appears in the ACE record. Do not quote an altitude for the 2024 winner.
To verify
Honey processing. One roaster reports that Basha, historically a dry/natural producer, has “this year” also introduced honey processing — skin removed, sticky mucilage left on during drying (Mazelab Coffee, via research report). No source dates this or ties it to the CoE lot, which was natural.
Farm, family and trade
Basha farms in Bensa woreda, in the eastern part of the Sidama zone — the same corner of Ethiopia that supplies much of the country’s highest-scoring natural coffee. Alongside farming he manages a mill, meaning he controls the drying and sorting rather than selling cherry to someone else’s station, which is the usual reason a smallholder’s coffee is traceable enough to enter a competition at all.
His father previously served as treasurer of Daye Bensa Coffee Company, described as the largest exporter out of Sidama, and father and son together own 15.5 hectares of coffee trees; a producer visit names three of his sites as Gibe (new), Kokose and Murago (Omwani, accessed 2026-07-23). He has exported through Café Kreyol since 2022 (Café Kreyol, accessed 2026-07-23), and coffee attributed to him has since appeared under several roasters in the UK, Canada and the US.
He credits his father for the outlook, quoting a family belief that “coffee is our bread” (same source). Since the win he has been reinvesting — buying more land and expanding the operation (Omwani, accessed 2026-07-23).
To verify
How much land, held how. Café Kreyol says he owns four farms in Bensa; Omwani says he and his father own 15.5 hectares together. These may well be the same land counted two ways, but the sources do not reconcile, and neither reflects a land registry. Do not state a hectare figure as his own holding.
To verify
His age and household. Two roaster bios from the competition year disagree: 30 years old, father of four (Café Kreyol, fetched 2026-07-23) versus 31 years old, father of four (James Gourmet Coffee, via research report, page unreachable). Both are secondary and undated. No birth year should be published.
Why it mattered
A record price is not a market rate — it is one determined bidder buying one small bag, a caveat that applies to every number on this page and is spelled out on Premiumisation. But two things about this particular record are unusual. It was set by a smallholder, not a famous estate, in a country where farms are typically measured in hectares rather than hundreds of hectares. And it was won by a natural-process Ethiopian heirloom-type variety rather than Geisha, which has dominated the top of the auction market for two decades. The buyer was an American roaster, Angelino’s Coffee, breaking a long pattern of East Asian buyers taking the top lots.
Related
- Cup of Excellence — the competition and auction he won
- Cup of Excellence records by country — where his price sits against every other national record
- Alliance for Coffee Excellence — the organization that runs the competition and publishes the results
- Angelino’s Coffee — the California roaster that paid $445/lb for lot 1A
- Saza Coffee — named on lot 1B, and a habitual record buyer elsewhere
- Coffee scoring · Cupping — what 90.50 points means and how it is arrived at
- Premiumisation — why auction prices climb the way they do
- Geisha — the variety his win did not involve, which is part of the story
- Alo Coffee · Echoes of the Peak — the other Bensa producer setting records, at its own private auction
Official links
- (no official website found — Basha Bekele is a smallholder farmer with no company site or public presence of his own)
- Official results — Alliance for Coffee Excellence, Ethiopia 2024 — the primary record of his win and auction prices
Sources
- Alliance for Coffee Excellence — Ethiopia 2024 results and auction — accessed 2026-07-23
- Cup of Excellence — official site — accessed 2026-07-23
- Ethiopian Monitor — Ethiopian coffee smashes Cup of Excellence’s auction record — accessed 2026-07-23
- Omwani — Meeting Basha Bekele, Ethiopia CoE 2024 winner — accessed 2026-07-23
- Café Kreyol — Basha Bekele farmer profile — accessed 2026-07-23
- Daily Coffee News — California roaster makes record bid of $445/lb at Ethiopia Cup of Excellence — cited in the research report; returned HTTP 403 on access 2026-07-23
- James Gourmet Coffee — Ethiopian Basha Bekele — cited in the research report; returned HTTP 403 on access 2026-07-23
- Christopher Feran — The hegemony of poured concrete and washed Ethiopians — cited in the research report, not independently fetched, accessed 2026-07-23
- Philo Coffee — Basha Bekele’s natural heirloom, Ethiopia — cited in the research report, not independently fetched, accessed 2026-07-23
- Mazelab Coffee — Basha Bekele — cited in the research report, not independently fetched, accessed 2026-07-23
- Oak Cliff Coffee — Basha Bekele — cited in the research report, not independently fetched, accessed 2026-07-23