Café Touba

Café Touba is Senegal’s own coffee, named after the holy city of Touba. What makes it different is djar – the Wolof name for grains of Selim, the dried, peppery pods of the Xylopia aethiopica tree. The pods (and often a few cloves) are roasted together with the coffee beans and ground into one powder, roughly four parts coffee to one part spice.

The powder goes into a cloth or paper filter and boiling water is poured through it, sometimes more than once. Vendors then sweeten it generously and pour it back and forth between cups or from a ladle to cool and froth it. It is drunk black – no milk – and tastes peppery, slightly smoky and bitter-sweet, with a lingering warmth; one writer compared it to Turkish coffee crossed with cola.

You’ll find it everywhere in Dakar and beyond: in pots and kettles at small street kiosks called tanganas, in markets, at bus stations and at religious gatherings, sold in small cups for very little money. It is also hugely popular in neighbouring Guinea-Bissau.

Café Touba is closely tied to the Mouride brotherhood, the Sufi order founded by Sheikh Amadou Bamba Mbacké, who founded the city of Touba in 1887. Bamba was exiled by the French colonial authorities to Gabon; according to the usual account, he came across grains of Selim there and, on returning to Senegal in the early 1900s, brought back the habit of roasting them with coffee. Sources differ on the exact year of his return and the details of the story, so it is best treated as tradition.

For Mourides the drink carries religious meaning and is associated with baraka (blessing). It was drunk to stay alert during long night-time chanting sessions, and it is still served at ceremonies, commemorations and the Grand Magal of Touba, the annual pilgrimage that marks Bamba’s exile.

Over recent decades café Touba spread from religious circles to everyday street life across Senegal and among people of all faiths. A World Bank report noted that after the late-2000s economic crisis many families, including children, began drinking it at breakfast. Its popularity even cut into sales of instant coffee in West Africa.