Most Nigerians drink coffee without thinking much about its journey. It shows up in the morning, keeps people alert through traffic, deadlines, and long days, then quietly disappears. For years, that was where the story ended. The beans were imported, the labels foreign, and the idea that Nigeria could grow premium coffee felt distant, almost unnecessary.
That quiet dependence went unquestioned until Mai Shayi Coffee Roasters entered the conversation in 2019, not as a loud disruption but as a deliberate response to a gap that had been ignored for too long. At the centre of that response is Ibrahim Samande, a creative entrepreneur whose path to coffee began far from farms and roasting drums.
Samande’s professional roots are in the creative arts. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Messiah University in Pennsylvania and later a Master of Fine Arts from Miami International University of Art & Design, building a career that blended strategy, design, and storytelling. His early work as a communications intern at UPS in the United States sharpened his understanding of structured systems, while later roles as an Art Director in Reykjavik, Iceland, and Associate Creative Director at Prima Garnet Ogilvy in Nigeria deepened his experience in branding, leadership, and execution at scale.
In 2016, he founded Yerima Design Limited, a branding and advertising firm that went on to work with major public and private institutions, including the Lagos State Electricity Board and the Rural Electrification Agency. His firm also managed high-profile brand transitions such as the repackaging and market relaunch of Farm Fresh dairy products. These experiences shaped Samande’s understanding of value chains, how products are built, presented, and trusted.
By the time Nigeria’s café culture began to accelerate, he saw coffee not only as a beverage but as a missed opportunity. Nigerians were consuming more coffee every year, yet local farmers remained disconnected from the value of that demand. Rather than approach coffee purely as retail, Samande chose to approach it as infrastructure.
Mai Shayi, named after the Hausa term for a traditional tea vendor, was conceived as a fully integrated coffee company, designed to control every stage of production from planting to processing to roasting and service. To ground that vision in technical knowledge, Samande undertook specialty coffee training in Kenya, gaining firsthand exposure to professional coffee farming, processing standards, and quality control systems used in established coffee-producing countries.
The real work began on the Jos Plateau, one of the few regions in Nigeria with the altitude and climate suitable for Arabica coffee. There, Mai Shayi developed its farming operations, now consisting of two owned Arabica coffee farms in Plateau State, including a long-established 25-year-old coffee farm and a purpose-developed plantation spanning about 20 hectares. Combined with expansion plots and surrounding operations, the company’s Arabica footprint covers roughly 30 hectares. The region’s cool temperatures, fertile volcanic soil, and elevation made it a natural choice, but success was never guaranteed. Arabica coffee is sensitive, slow-growing, and unforgiving of shortcuts.
Farming alone, however, was never enough. One of the biggest historical weaknesses of Nigerian coffee has been what happens after harvest. Poor post-harvest handling and inadequate processing facilities often destroyed quality before beans could reach the market. Mai Shayi addressed this structural problem by establishing Nigeria’s first dedicated coffee processing plant, a custom-built facility capable of processing up to 100 tons of coffee per week through modern wet and dry milling systems. This single investment changed the trajectory of the operation, allowing full control over fermentation, drying, sorting, and storage.
With processing standards in place, consistency followed. Bean quality improved, defects dropped, and flavour profiles became clearer. Nigerian Arabica, once dismissed as unreliable, began to show balance, sweetness, and clarity that could compete in the specialty market.
Roasting became the next layer of precision. Mai Shayi invested in commercial roasting and packaging facilities attached to its café locations, ensuring tight feedback loops between roasting, tasting, and consumer experience. Roast profiles were developed deliberately, tested repeatedly, and refined to highlight the natural character of the beans rather than conceal flaws. The approach treated coffee as a craft supported by engineering, not guesswork.
Today, Mai Shayi operates two flagship café locations, one in Asokoro, Abuja, and another in Victoria Island, Lagos, each functioning as both retail spaces and production hubs. These cafés are designed to feel familiar rather than foreign, blending modern brewing methods such as pour-over, Chemex, AeroPress, and siphon brewing with Nigerian-inspired cuisine and hospitality. The goal is not to perform coffee culture, but to integrate it naturally into everyday life.
Beyond retail, the company has also built a cooperative of over 100 Arabica coffee farmers, supporting them with training, improved planting material, and fairer pricing structures. Through tissue culture propagation and better agronomic practices, Mai Shayi is working to improve yields and quality across its supply base, creating income opportunities in rural Plateau communities while strengthening the long-term viability of Nigerian coffee production.
In 2021, the company secured an equity investment that accelerated its expansion, enabling further farm development, processing capacity, and operational scale. Since then, Mai Shayi has attracted growing attention from policymakers, industry leaders, and development stakeholders interested in practical models of agricultural value addition.
In a country where coffee consumption continues to rise but production has long lagged behind, Mai Shayi represents a shift in thinking. It demonstrates that Nigerian coffee does not have to be an experiment or a novelty and with the right systems, discipline, and patience, it can be a serious product built for both local pride and global relevance.
Every cup served tells that story quietly. It speaks of land on the Plateau, of hands that harvest and process with care, and of a belief that Nigeria does not need to import excellence to enjoy it. Mai Shayi is not rushing to rewrite Nigeria’s coffee story, it is rebuilding it carefully, one harvest, one roast, and one cup at a time.
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