French: Café Touba is a coffee beverage that is a popular traditional drink from Senegal that is (more recently) also consumed in Guinea-Bissau, and is named for the city of Touba, Senegal.
French: Café Touba is a coffee drink that is flavored with grains of Selim or Guinea pepper (the dried fruit of the shrub Xylopia aethiopica)[1] (locally known as Wolof: djar, in the Wolof language) and sometimes cloves. The addition of Wolof: djar, that is cultivated in Touba, is the important factor differentiating French: café Touba from plain coffee. The spices are mixed and roasted with coffee beans, then ground into a powder. The drink is prepared using a filter, in a manner similar to that used to prepare drip coffee.
French: Café Touba (French for 'Touba coffee') is named for the city of Touba, Senegal (Hassaniya Arabic Arabic: Ṭūbā, 'Felicity'). The drink is traditionally consumed by the Islamic Mouride brotherhood as it came to Senegal when the brotherhood's founder, Sheikh Amadou Bamba Mbacké, returned from exile in Gabon in 1902.[1] [2] The drink is served during ceremonies, commemorations, and during the Grand Magal of Touba.[3]
The coffee-to-Wolof: djar ratio is typically around 80 percent coffee to 20 percent Wolof: djar. In recent years, consumption of French: café Touba has been increasing as the drink is spreading to cities of all faiths, both in and outside Senegal.[4] The World Bank wrote that a progressive elimination of imported coffee seems common in poorer areas of Senegal as a result of the global recession of 2009: a Senegalese restaurant owner stated, "We weren't used to the Tuba Coffee for breakfast, but since the crisis people drink it a lot, also children."[5] Commercial export outside Senegal, while small, is present.[6] In Guinea-Bissau, French: café Touba has become the country's most popular drink, even though it was relatively unknown several years ago.[7] Consumption of French: café Touba increased to the point that sales of instant coffee, most notably Nescafé, decreased in West Africa. To more directly compete with French: café Touba, Nestlé launched a product that contains spices, called Nescafé Ginger & Spice.[8]