Forgotten for half a century, this rare bean could save Sierra Leone's coffee industry

Civil war destroyed Sierra Leone's coffee industry, but the rediscovery of a rare coffee plant called stenophylla could help it make a comeback.

(CNN) — About 200 miles southeast of Sierra Leone's capital, agricultural researcher Daniel Sarmu made the discovery of a lifetime in the steep and humid Kambui Hills. In 2018, Sarmu and two researchers from Kew Royal Botanic Gardens in the UK were on a mission to find the long-lost stenophylla coffee of Sierra Leone. The rare West African coffee plant hadn't been seen in the wild there since 1954, although it had been spotted sporadically in Guinea and the Ivory Coast over the years. The rediscovery of Sierra Leone's highland coffee has renewed hopes that the uncommon crop could be cultivated and produced commercially -- and help to revive the country's floundering coffee industry, which was decimated by 11 years of civil war.