Buna Kela — Coffee as a Moral Ecology

In the highlands of Gera, mist rises before the sun. Women light the fire, water hums in the pot, and the smell of roasting beans drifts through eucalyptus smoke. People begin to gather — not to trade, not to debate, but to listen. In this space, the cup is older than money, older than law. Here, coffee is not a product but a promise: a way to remember that peace must be brewed daily, that land and life are shared, and that no one drinks alone.

The Circle of Buna Kela: Coffee as Covenant

When we say Buna Kela, we do not speak only of coffee. We speak of the circle that forms around it — a moral geometry that holds the community together. Across Oromo regions — from Gera to Guji, Wallaga, and Boorana — the form of Buna Kela may differ, but its spirit remains the same: a circle of peace, respect, and shared humanity. Among the Oromo, Buna Kela is one of several forms of coffee ceremony practiced across our territories. Some communities call it Buna Qalaa or Buna Tuma, each carrying its own rhythm and meaning.

Elders, neighbours, family, sometimes even those who have hurt one another, sit side by side while the beans crackle. The first pour, often called Abol, invites attention; the second, known in some areas as Tona or Arajaa, carries reflection; the third, Baraka, seals the blessing.

In Oromo tradition, coffee is not consumed — it is shared. Each round is a movement toward reconciliation, a rhythm of generosity and listening. The ceremony is led most often by women, whose grace defines the pace of peace. They roast, grind, and brew with deliberate calm. Their hands are not just preparing a drink; they are preparing a ground for dialogue. When two people quarrel, it is often the elder woman who proposes a Buna Kela. When a marriage begins, it is coffee that seals the vow.

Women are the traditional hosts and moral anchors of Buna Kela. Their hands roast, grind, and pour — but their wisdom guides the circle toward peace and dignity.

I have witnessed neighbours who stopped speaking for years meet again through this ritual. The elder pours the first cup, sets it between them, and waits. No speech is forced. The steam does the talking. One sip, then another — and silence turns into apology. Coffee, in that moment, becomes language: a soft diplomacy written in aroma and patience.

For outsiders, it might look like hospitality. But for us, it is justice in domestic form — a way to heal the social body before it fractures beyond repair. The ethics of Buna Kela are clear: respect the other, forgive the wound, honour the presence of life that flows through all. It is an everyday democracy, unrecorded but enacted thousands of times across the highlands.

This is why, when we speak of coffee value chains, we must also speak of moral chains — the invisible ties that hold dignity together. The cup on your table has travelled through these circles of meaning. It carries not only taste, but a worldview: one that measures value not in currency, but in peace kept, in harmony restored.

In this sense, Buna Kela is our oldest cooperative. Long before traceability software or blockchain ledgers, our ancestors developed a system where every pour was a signature of trust. It bound families, settled conflicts, and taught generations how to share without hierarchy. The ritual was our first governance — not written in law, but lived in gesture.

Today, as Ethiopia modernizes its coffee sector, we must not lose this foundation. We can digitize farms, build traceable supply chains, and meet every export regulation — but if the moral ecology that once protected us fades, we will have gained efficiency and lost our soul. Buna Kela reminds us that coffee’s power is not in the market, but in the meeting. It is not the export, but the encounter, that defines who we are.

The Land as Kin: Lessons from Oromo Moral Ecology

To understand Oromo coffee, one must first understand how we see the land — not as resource, but as relationship. In our language, the earth is not an “it.” She is a being, a mother, a relative. We call her lafti abba keenyaa — the land of our fathers — a phrase that holds both belonging and responsibility. While modern systems may frame land as property, in Oromo tradition it carries an older sense of reciprocity and care. You take care of the soil because the soil takes care of you.

What I call Oromo Moral Ecology is not a single doctrine, but a living set of values shared in many Oromo communities. It is a worldview where the environment is moral territory, not economic property. Our farming is an act of respect, guided by Safuu — the moral order that governs right relations between people, nature, and Waaqa (God) — and by Ayyaana, the life force that connects all beings.

The thick, sacred brew of Buna Kela — coffee berries roasted, pounded, and mixed with butter — shared among family and community as a symbol of unity and gratitude.

A farmer who cuts a tree without reason is seen not only as wasteful but as breaking Safuu — disturbing the moral balance between human and earth. In traditional gatherings, such acts would demand apology, not to a person, but to the land itself.

In this worldview, trees are elders, rivers are siblings, and animals are our teachers. A coffee tree is not a production unit; it is part of a living fabric. When we prune, we speak gently. When we compost, we return what we have taken. Even the ash from the hearth has its place — returned to the soil as memory of the fire that once kept us warm. These gestures may seem small, but they are philosophy made daily.

Our moral ecology does not need to be translated into Western sustainability terms. It already contains them — and more. Before anyone measured carbon, we measured balance. Before the word “organic” existed, our grandmothers mixed compost with reverence. Before the EU’s deforestation law, our elders protected sacred groves because spirit lives in shade.

Women and elders remain the guardians of this system. They hold the stories of rain, the timing of flowering, the meaning of certain bird calls that announce the harvest’s readiness. Their authority is communal and experiential — born of listening and memory, not formal power. When we lose them, we lose archives no computer can store.

To live by Oromo Moral Ecology is to live in rhythm, not dominance. The farmer and the bird are co-workers. The tree gives fruit not because we demand it, but because the system is in balance. And when that balance breaks — through drought, greed, or external extraction — the repair must begin not with policy, but with apology.

This way of seeing challenges the logic of global agriculture. Where industrial systems speak of yield and efficiency, we speak of continuity and care. We do not aim to maximize, but to harmonize. For us, the highest yield is not quantity, but equilibrium — the ability to farm today without robbing tomorrow.

Now, as climate change redraws our seasons, this ancient wisdom is more relevant than ever. The planet’s crisis is not only technical; it is moral. Machines can map deforestation, but they cannot teach humility. Markets can pay for carbon, but they cannot pay for balance. That must be learned — or remembered — through the moral ecology we already hold.

In our language, this is dignity for the planet — justice extended to soil, rain, and tree. In the language of our ancestors, it is simply right living.

From Heritage to Horizon: The Future of Coffee Justice

Every generation inherits two things — soil and story. The first sustains our bodies; the second sustains our meaning. Today, Ethiopia’s coffee farmers stand at a crossroads between both. Technology, traceability, and digital markets are arriving fast, promising inclusion, visibility, and efficiency. Yet beneath the surface lies an older question: inclusion into what, visibility to whom, and efficiency for whose benefit?

If we digitize without dignity, we will only translate old inequalities into new code. That is why we insist that farmers must not be treated as data points but as designers — co-authors of the systems that claim to serve them. When a farmer’s name, plot, and harvest become digital entries, that information must remain theirs, protected like seed and heritage. Data is the new land; whoever controls it controls the future.

A respected elder partakes in the sacred Buna Kela ceremony. Among the Oromo, elders guide the ritual with calm authority, turning coffee into an act of reconciliation and moral teaching.

In our cooperative unions, we are beginning to experiment with this idea. Farmers’ profiles are mapped not just for compliance but for cooperation. GPS is not surveillance but solidarity: it ensures that the land and the people who care for it are visible on their own terms. These tools can support our ethics only when built through dialogue — when technology learns from tradition, not the other way around. When traceability becomes a shared tool rather than a managerial instrument, it reconnects the global buyer with the moral ecology of the farm. The trace then carries not only a location, but a story, a name, and a value that cannot be priced.

True sustainability must therefore grow from within culture, not above it. Buna Kela and Oromo Moral Ecology already contain the principles the modern world keeps reinventing: transparency, participation, equity, care. The difference is that ours are lived through ritual, not regulation. They are taught in the aroma of roasting beans, in the patience of pouring water, in the humility of listening before speaking.

Women and elders — once central to the ceremony — must now also become central to leadership. Their roles in hosting, mediating, and teaching can inspire how cooperatives, unions, and ministries imagine governance itself. A coffee system shaped in their image would not separate profit from peace or efficiency from empathy. It would recognize that progress without care is another form of loss.

Our vision is simple but radical: a coffee world where heritage leads innovation. Where the circle of Buna Kela expands from a home in Gera to the whole chain of global trade. Where the same respect shown to an elder at the ceremony is shown to the farmer in negotiation. Where every cup abroad carries, alongside its flavor, a trace of moral geography — the knowledge that this coffee was born in justice, not only in altitude.

This is the horizon we work toward: a coffee world where every pour connects the local and the global, the ancestral and the digital, the human and the ecological. It is not another project or brand, but a way of working — one that lets traceability become transparency, and technology become trust. When we brew, we remember the covenant that began long before trade: to live with dignity upon the land that feeds us, and to share its blessings with fairness and respect.

And if you ever visit our homes, sit with us for Buna Kela. You will see that what begins as a cup ends as a covenant — between people, land, and life itself.