01
Born in Malawi
Five generations of the Gaffar family, four Maravi cafés and a supermarket presence in the country that gave the brand its name.
SUMLII LLP · The Maravi / Gaffar group
A name that carried coffee.
SUMLII is the Maravi group’s vehicle for overseas markets. Its name comes from a dhow that once carried Malawian coffee towards the sea — and it now carries the Maravi café idea to Spain.
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Our purpose
A new market, explored before it is entered.
Maravi began in Malawi, grew up in Britain, and is now looking further afield. SUMLII exists to find out where the Maravi café and roastery idea can work next, and how it should be done properly in a country that is not yet home.
That means research, local partnerships, joint-operation agreements, licensing and — where the business culture rewards it — franchising. It means a first site that proves the model, and a structure that can be repeated.
SUMLII was formed in June 2025 as an extension of the Gaffar family group of companies, owned and operated by Gaffar Family Holdings LLP. The first country it is exploring is Spain.
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The journey
Malawi roots. British experience. A Spanish chapter.
02
Grown in Britain
A south-coast pilot that opened in 2022 and became five Maravi coffee shops, including a café and coffee roastery.
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Exploring Spain
A Spanish structure, a first pilot in Marbella and local touches — a terrace, a later evening, a Spanish name above the door.
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Made in Malawi
Rooms the family built.
Long before the dhow was printed on anything, the family was renovating buildings in Malawi: a plastics factory in Blantyre turned into an artisan bakery and garden; an office warehouse in Lilongwe turned into a bakery, café and roastery; a backpacker bar in the capital’s forest reserve turned into a coffee house under the trees.
These are the family’s own photographs, from its design portfolio — the before and the after. They are the most honest advertisement for the business that exists.
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See the before and after
Three projects, ten years, photographed room by room.
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The name
The dhow Sumlii.
The family has photographs of a dhow called Sumlii, said to have belonged to Sean Sumlii, a close friend of their great-grandfather Adam Gaffar. Malawi has never registered its boats, so the story lives in family memory rather than in a shipping register.
What is certain is the road it served: porters carrying forty-pound sacks for some twenty-five miles to the river, then a hundred and eighty miles by boat to the coast, where the dhows waited. That is the journey this company is named after.
It is a good story. It is a better one because the family is still carrying the same cargo — Malawian coffee, roasted and served with care — and now taking it to new countries.
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Malawi
A country worth knowing.
Malawi is one of the least known countries in Africa and one of the most generous. A fifth of it is water. Its people speak Chichewa and English. Its old kingdom, Maravi, gave the brand its name and gave the region its shape.
We are building a section of this website around that story: the Maravi Kingdom and its iron and ivory trade, the arrival of missionaries and empire, the road to independence in 1964, and the coffee growers who carried the crop to the coast and still grow it today.
It is not decoration. A brand that carries a country’s name should know the country.
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The Maravi Kingdom
A powerful confederation of chiefdoms that traded iron, ivory and cloth from the highlands to the Indian Ocean.
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Malawi: a short history
From early settlement and the Yao and Ngoni migrations to Nyasaland, independence and democracy.
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Coffee and its growers
The crop, the carriers, the disease that nearly ended it, and the co-operatives that rebuilt it.
Partners and enquiries
Talk to us about the next chapter.
Spanish joint ventures, the UK franchise, or the story of a country and its coffee — start with a conversation.