The Coffee Belt is that zone spanning the globe between Cancer and Capricorn. It's here all commercial coffee is farmed. Almost every viable plot of land inside this zone has grown coffee at sometime or another. It takes in the Americas – where coffee is grown from Mexico down through Central America to the bottom of Brazil, the Caribbean and Hawaii (the only place in the USA that grows commercial coffee); Africa – including the coffee growing countries of Ethiopia, Uganda, the Ivory Coast, Tanzania, Kenya, Cameroon, Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, Guinea, Togo, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Ghana, Malawi, Gabon and Benin; India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and the very southern bit of China.

Along with Belgium, Britain, Portugal and France, Germany carved out large areas of Africa, prospecting it for the best means of exploitation. Coffee quickly became one of the main items of interest when it was discovered that certain varieties were indigenous to sub-Saharan Africa where they grew wild and, most importantly, seemed resistant to disease.

The Coffee Zone was divided into spheres of influence, if not by outright boots-on-the-ground colonisation. Coffee producing states of Africa and Asia might have been Europe's economic 'protectorates', but as the countries of South and Central American gained independence from their former overlords, the US began filling the vacuum– adapting colonialism to changing economic conditions.

Coffee growing regions of South and Central America.

Coffee Growing Regions of Africa

Coffee Growing Regions of the Far East