LetSequoia — Specialty Coffee from the Heart of Africa

Why LetSequoia Exists

The Coffee Industry's
Dirty Secret

The coffee you drink travels from a farm in Rwanda to your cup through a chain of traders, importers, roasters, and retailers — each taking a cut. By the time value is distributed, the farmer who grew it gets almost none of it.

7¢

What a farmer earns from your $2.80 cup of coffee

90%
Of coffee's total value that flows OUT of Africa to consuming countries

$600

Average annual income for a smallholder Arabica coffee farmer

5.5M

Of 12.5M global smallholder farmers living below the poverty line

The largest companies in specialty coffee — roasters, importers, retailers — have built extraordinary businesses on the backs of farmers who cannot afford to send their children to school on their annual income.

"Ethically sourced." "Fair trade." "Direct trade." These words appear on millions of bags. But when 90% of value flows out of the continent where the coffee is grown, words are not enough.

Anna Kim started LetSequoia because she believed the entire model was broken — and that someone needed to build a different one.

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The LetSequoia Difference

Pre-finance working capital reaches farmers before harvest
Premium prices flow directly to washing station partners
Roasting happens at origin — keeping processing jobs in Africa
Long-term partnerships, not spot-market transactions
Digital Centers at every washing station — investing in the next generation

Meet the Woman Who Said Enough

Anna Kim — CEO & Founder

"Fearless. Share happiness. Love a daring entrepreneur to make legendary economic development in Africa."

— Anna Kim, on her mission

The Founder

Anna Kim:
Architect of Africa's Coffee Future

Inyoung Anna Kim didn't just find a niche in specialty coffee — she built one where none existed, in a country still rewriting its own story.

Armed with a UCLA education in International Development and an unshakeable belief in Africa's potential, Anna arrived in Kigali, Rwanda in 2013 as a young Korean-American female entrepreneur. She didn't know anyone. She didn't have a distribution network. She had vision, and she had nerve.

What she built — LetSequoia — became a recognized force in global specialty coffee, spanning two countries, championing farmers' economic self-reliance, and earning her a seat on the SCA Board of Directors, the global governing body of the specialty coffee industry. In 2019, she was invited to speak at the YPO EDGE Global Leadership Summit in Cape Town — the world's premier gathering of chief executives — delivering a talk titled "Putting Down Roots."

Education

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
International Development

SCA Board of Directors

Specialty Coffee Association — Global governing body. Served through 2019. "Invaluable leadership and countless volunteer hours." — SCA

YPO EDGE 2019 — Speaker

Young Presidents' Organization Global Leadership Summit, Cape Town. Talk: "Putting Down Roots." Recognized among the world's top CEO-level social entrepreneurs.

AFCA Steering Committee

African Fine Coffees Association — Appointed 2017. Shapes policy for the continent's finest coffee export sector.

WEF White Paper Featured

"No Such Thing as a Commodity" — World Economic Forum, December 2018. Recognized alongside ITC, eBay, and DHL for innovative trade and packaging.

SCAE Int'l Dev. Committee

Specialty Coffee Association of Europe — Member since 2015. Driving development in origin countries.

As seen in:

World Economic Forum YPO EDGE SCA 25 Magazine ITC · eBay · DHL

The Philosophy

Why the Sequoia?

The giant Sequoia is the largest living thing on Earth. But its roots are surprisingly shallow — never more than six feet deep.

Its secret? The Sequoia spreads its roots wide, intertwining with every neighboring tree, sharing nutrients, sharing water, holding each other upright in storms. Individually fragile. Collectively invincible.

That is LetSequoia. We don't extract from communities — we grow into them. Each farmer, each washing station, each partner country is another root in the system. The stronger our network, the taller we all grow.

See Our Impact

Self-Reliance

Community

Excellence

🌲

Years in Africa

Countries of Origin

Max Altitude (Mivona)

African Origins Available

Single-Origin Offerings

Coffee Born
at Altitude

Every cup we offer has a GPS coordinate, a farmer's name, and a story. We specialize in high-altitude, wet-processed specialty coffee from East and Central Africa.

Flagship

🇷🇼 Rwanda

Inzere Washing Station

Born from an extraordinary act of collective faith. Local farmers pooled 2,400–6,000 Rwandan Francs each — less than $10 — because no single farmer's harvest was large enough to matter alone. Together, they built something remarkable.

VarietyBourbon

ProcessWet-Process, Sun Dried

Elevation1,600–1,850m

RegionNyanza District, Southern Province

Request a Sample

🇨🇩 DR Congo

Mivona Washing Station

Among the most extraordinary high-altitude coffees on the continent. LetSequoia's company-owned station in Minova, managed by our team on the ground, employs local families and produces coffee at elevations that few in the world can match.

VarietiesBourbon, Blue Mountain, Local

ProcessWet-Process, Sun Dried

Elevation1,750–2,150m

RegionMpumpi, Minova, South Kivu

Request a Sample

Also Available From:

🇧🇮 Burundi 🇰🇪 Kenya 🇪🇹 Ethiopia 🇿🇲 Zambia 🇹🇿 Tanzania 🇹🇬 Togo 🇿🇦 South Africa 🇿🇼 Zimbabwe

We also offer roasted-at-origin coffee — sourced, processed, and packaged locally in Africa. Request our full buying guide →

Professional Services

CQR: Cupping,
Quality & Roasting

Our B2B service for roasters who demand precision. We create accurate, comprehensive flavor profiles of your roasted coffee — tracking how it evolves over time, across temperatures, and through different storage conditions.

Basic

2 Weeks

Daily sessions

Initial flavor profiling with tracking of how the coffee changes over time.

✓ Component 1: Complete flavor profile
✓ Component 2: Profile change over time
○ Environmental analysis
○ Temperature effects
○ Storage material study

Get in Touch

Coffee as
Infrastructure

LetSequoia's mission has never been just about coffee. It's about building the economic infrastructure that makes African nations self-reliant — one washing station, one digital center, one farmer at a time.

Our washing stations double as community hubs. Every station is slated to house a Digital Center — giving farmers' children internet access and educational technology that reduces inequality by closing the knowledge gap.

Because Anna Kim believes the same thing every Sequoia tree proves: when roots intertwine, everyone reaches the light.

🌳

Sequoia Forest Project

Reforestation and biodiversity preservation around coffee-growing communities.

💰

Pre-Finance Program

Working capital for smallholder farmers before harvest — breaking the debt cycle.

🏛️

The Coffee Commons

A shared marketplace and knowledge hub for East and Central African coffee producers.

Partners at Inzere CWS, Nyanza District, Rwanda

📡

Digital Access Mission
Every LetSequoia washing station will have a Digital Center — internet access and computer learning for farmers' children. Because connectivity is the new infrastructure.

Recognition

Where Anna's Work
Has Been Recognized

World Economic Forum

"No Such Thing as a Commodity" — WEF White Paper, December 2018. Anna Kim cited alongside ITC, eBay, and DHL for pioneering sustainable trade and origin-based packaging innovation.

YPO EDGE 2019 — Cape Town

"For me as a mother of a 21-year-old, the most inspirational session was listening to Anna Inyoung Kim. A Korean girl moving to Africa and doing what she can to create impact and fair trade across the coffee industry." — YPO EDGE Attendee

SCA 25 Magazine — Issue 9

"Rise and Shine in Rwanda" — The global specialty coffee industry's flagship magazine profiles LetSequoia's model for building coffee infrastructure from origin up.

SCA Board of Directors

"Inyoung Anna Kim provided invaluable leadership to the association and dedicated countless volunteer hours." — Official SCA Board Farewell Note, 2019

Work With Us

Start a
Conversation

Whether you're a specialty roaster looking for single-origin Rwanda or Congo, a buyer seeking a cupping service, or a partner in development — we want to hear from you.

📍

Kigali, Rwanda
8 KN 37 st, Kiyovu, Kigali

📧

info@letsequoia.com

📷

@letsequoia_anna
@letsequoia_korea

Your Name

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She Left Los Angeles
to Change Africa

The Coffee Industry's
Dirty Secret

Anna Kim:
Architect of Africa's Coffee Future

Why the Sequoia?