The emergence of coffee was the most important economic development throughout the British era. As early as 1900, Catholic missionaries brought Arabica coffee to the mountain. Nonetheless, coffee production increased during the 1920s, partly as a result of Charles Dundas' activities. When he was appointed as the Moshi district officer in 1920, he thought that coffee was "the sine qua non" of the growth of the indigenous economy and started to provide mountain farmers with direct government assistance in growing the commodity. The outcomes were extraordinary, to put it mildly. The Dar es Salaam government began to view the Kilimanjaro people as economically progressive in the 1930s.Bender, Matthew V. “BEING ‘CHAGGA’: NATURAL RESOURCES, POLITICAL ACTIVISM, AND IDENTITY ON KILIMANJARO.” The Journal of African History, vol. 54, no. 2, 2013, pp. 199–220. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43305102. Accessed 11 Apr. 2023.
