Our story
Born from a love of the bean
Jowam Coffee Training Centre opened its doors in Nairobi with one clear conviction: great baristas are made on the machine, not in the classroom. Too many training programmes filled notebooks and left students unsure how to pull a consistent espresso under real café pressure. We built Jowam to close that gap — a dedicated school in the heart of the city where every session ends with your hands on equipment.
Our facility at Pension Towers on Loita Street runs monthly intakes, capped small so every student gets individual coaching time. Whether you are eyeing your first barista role, upgrading your latte-art game, or learning to roast green beans from scratch, the curriculum moves at the pace of your ambition. Theory is brief and purposeful; practical time is generous.
We believe specificity builds confidence. You will know why a 22-second extraction tastes different from a 28-second one, what grind adjustment to make in Nairobi's morning humidity, and how to calibrate a commercial grinder cold. That kind of depth is what employers notice — and what makes the difference between a graduate who survives a busy Saturday and one who owns it.
Meet the team
Instructors who work the industry
Every coach at Jowam has come up through commercial coffee — they know what real kitchens and cafés demand, and they build that reality into every session.
James Mwangi
SCA Barista Skills — Professional
James spent six years on the floor of Nairobi's busiest hotel-lobby café before crossing into training. He holds the SCA Professional Barista Skills certification and has coached competition teams at three regional barista championships. His speciality is sensory calibration — teaching students to identify and correct flavour defects by taste alone.
Wanjiru Kamau
SCA Coffee Roasting — Intermediate · Q Grader Candidate
Wanjiru trained under roasters in Mombasa and Kericho before joining Jowam. She manages the roasting curriculum and leads the extraction-science modules. Currently completing her Q Grader certification through the Coffee Quality Institute, she brings a research mindset to every cupping session — insisting students document their sensory notes, not just taste.
David Otieno
SCA Brewing — Foundation · Latte Art Specialist
David began as a barista in Westlands before discovering a talent for pouring intricate milk patterns consistently at speed. He teaches the manual-brewing and milk-science modules and runs the Saturday latte-art intensives. His rule in class: technique before aesthetics — get the steam temperature right every time, and the rosette follows.
The training lab
Real equipment. Real environment.
We run the same machines you will find in Nairobi's top specialty cafés and hotels. When you graduate, the hardware is already familiar.
Espresso Lab
Commercial La Marzocco group heads, calibrated daily. Students rotate through every position — barista, grinder tech, and trainer — across each session.
Brewing Studio
Aeropress, Chemex, V60, and batch-brew rigs alongside refractometers and calibrated scales. Manual brewing sessions run parallel to espresso so students understand the full extraction spectrum.
Saturday practical session — Pension Towers, Loita Street
Ready when you are
Come and train with us
Monthly intakes, transparent pricing, and real equipment in the heart of Nairobi.