Mosi Oa Tunya

Mosi Oa Tunya — the Lozi name of the Victoria Falls, the smoke that thunders — is Zimbabwe's first hand-rolled cigar factory, say the house and the country's press. It was born of a conversation across two continents: Shepherd Mafundikwa, who does not smoke, had spent fifteen years with an American airline and noticed how many cigar lounges were opening in the United States, in a country that rolled none while his own has grown tobacco for a century. He came home, founded the company in 2019 with Loy Veal, went to see factories in Cuba and the Dominican Republic, and brought back a Dominican maestro, Elias López.

The factory is in Graniteside, Harare's industrial area. Seven women had learned to roll there by July 2020, ten by 2022; the house made it a women's employment project, and one of them told the press she had been out of work before. The tobacco is an air-cured Burley — the small dark share of a country that mostly produces cigarette Virginia — and the wrapper is imported, because the local leaf breaks: 95% local, 5% from elsewhere, and a stated aim of reaching all of it. Two hundred cigars a day at the start, five sizes, Habano, Sumatra or Connecticut wrappers depending on the line.

The dates differ from one paper to the next — launch in March 2020 for one, May for the other, production announced in July; the entry writes all three. In 2022 the house said it exported to Brazil, Romania, South Africa, the United States, Angola, Congo and Dubai.

Range Depth

• Mosi Oa Tunya Toro

  Wrapper Zimbabwean (Burley); imported wrapper · Strength Medium-Full

  The house's big size, Habano or Sumatra wrapper on Zimbabwean Burley.

• Mosi Oa Tunya Corona

  Wrapper Zimbabwean (Burley); imported wrapper · Strength Medium

  The classic size, wrapper not specified by the house.