RWANDA
AREA 26,338 km2
Sources: Anette Moldvaer: Coffee Obsession, ptscoffee.com
average altitude of plantations
(metres above sea level)
coffee is the 3rd most important
export in Rwanda
washing stations in Rwanda
annual coffee production
25,000 tons
earned by Rwandans
through coffee exports in 2012
POPULATION 12.2 million
CURRENCY Rwandan franc (1 € ≈ 754 RWF)
CAPITAL Kigali
Majority of Rwandan specialty coffee WESTERN PROVINCE
is fully washed. The districts along lake Kivu are home
to some of the most famed washing
Mills are associated with bicycles due stations in Rwanda, consistently
to carriers transferring bags of coffee. producing complex, floral, elegant,
juicy coffees of the highest quality.
Estimated that water mills currently
process only 20 % of their capacity
so some of them could be economically SOUTHERN PROVINCE
unviable in the future. The higher elevation of Rwanda’s southern
province produces coffees with classic
floral or citrus flavours and a delicate
Rwandan coffee begins to appear
creamy texture – subtle and sweet.
in European, American and Japanese
roasteries around August/September.
Largest trading partners of Rwandan EASTERN PROVINCE
farmers are Japan and South Korea. The southeast corner of Rwanda is
home to a small number of washing
stations and farms that are slowly
gaining a reputation for coffees with
notes of rich chocolate and forest fruit.
NORTHERN PROVINCE
500,000 number of family farms NORTHERN PROVINCE
The citrus, stone fruit and caramel tones
of the coffees from the south of the
1,700 Northern Province make these coffees
balanced and sweet.
$3.40 average income per kg of coffee
3rd
coffee grows on 42,000 hectares
EASTERN PROVINCE
42,000 ha across the country
WESTERN PROVINCE
200 average number of trees on
SOUTHERN PROVINCE
165 a farm
largest producer of Arabica
9 th in the world
coffee plant density
$115 million
200 300 000
22 / ISSUE 2 23 / THE COFFEE

DAVID RUBANZANGABO
David Rubanzangabo is the owner of the
renowned Huye Mountain Coffee farm
in Rwanda. David’s passion for coffee
began in 1998 while he was working as
an agronomist in the Rwanda Coffee
Development Authority (OCIR). Eight years
later he became the main technician of
project SPREAD, and not long after he took
a chance on starting his own coffee farm.
David’s knowledge and broad experience
paid off right away – that same year he
had success with his first coffee at the
prestigious Cup of Excellence competition.
On top of all that David is a motorbike
rider and a movie actor - you can see him
in the amazing documentary A Film About
Coffee. Quite a cool farmer, right?
Hi David, could you tell me something about your
family background?
My wife and I, and our three children, are a family
of coffee growers and lovers who live and work in
the Southern Province of Rwanda, Huye District,
Huye Sector. We have a coffee plantation of four
hectares and a mini washing station, and market
our coffee under the Huye Mountain Coffee brand.
When did you realize that you wanted to work
in coffee?
IIt all started in 2004 with the planting of coffee trees
on our plantation while I was still working for OCIR
CAFE, the Rwandan national coffee board. In 2011,
we built a mini washing station there, and in 2012
we exported a small quantity of our green coffee
to the USA. That same year we won Cup Of Excellence
2012 by getting second place with close to 90 points,
and since then we have continued to produce
more coffee.
What was your first experience with coffee?
As an agronomist at OCIR in 1998, I learned a great deal
about coffee production from supervising coffee
cooperative growers.
When did you start Huye Mountain Coffee?
We officially started our own brand of coffee in 2012
after selling our first product and submitting our first lot
in the 2012 Rwanda Cup of Excellence.
How does Huye Mountain work? How many farmers
and families cooperate with Huye Mountain?
We collaborate with 1,300 coffee farmers in the area
and share our knowledge with them about how to grow
more and better coffee cherries. During the harvest period,
we collect all the coffee cherries from the farmers and
take care of the processing, drying, milling, and selling
on the international market. After the season is over,
we share profits with the farmers.
Do you have any social programs for farmers?
We do have a community program where we support
farmers with getting health insurance, procuring
livestock, cover school fees for their children
and promote saving our Rwandan cultural heritage.
Do you think it is important to share new knowledge
about coffee growing and processing? What is your
source of this knowledge?
I feel it’s important to stay up to date. We often speak
with our coffee buyers to better understand what they
are looking for with respect to the type or standards
of coffee and the quality of the coffee they prefer.
We also plan to visit other coffee farmers to gather
25 / THE COFFEE
more information about how they improve the quality
of their coffee, and share these technical practices used
by other growers with our own.
You are developing a concept of ‘coffee tourism
and hiking’. Can you tell us more about this?
The coffee tour experience is the latest addition to
our coffee diversification program. We designed a tour
that will enrich all coffee lovers and tourists visiting
Rwanda for the first time. The detailed tour will cover
how coffee is grown, harvested, dried, roasted, packed
and finally delivered to our customers. From our Huye
coffee washing station right on our plantation visitors
can get a first-hand experience of coffee growing and
production. Included in our coffee tour experience is
a hike up the mountain to view the spectacular scenery
from above. At the end of each tour, visitors will have
the opportunity to buy some freshly roasted coffee
to bring back home.
What makes your coffee special?
We are fully devoted to quality control at every step
of coffee production, from the plantation to the cup,
and I think you can taste it in our coffee.
What do you think about the direct-trade model
of buying coffee?
It’s a model that is helpful for the sustainability of
the business and with marketing the coffee too.
Can you compare the Rwandan coffee industry in
the 90s, pre-genocide, to the present?
It is very different. Before the genocide, 100 % of Rwandan
coffee was for the ordinary market. Now producers are
focusing on the speciality coffee market, where coffee
gains a premium price according its quality.
How do you see future of the Rwandan coffee industry?
Coffee should have a good future here as our government
institutions are putting more effort into the sector just
as we in the private sector are working to increase
production and quality of our specialty coffee.
What are your plans for the future?
We plan to continue producing high quality coffee
for the specialty market and helping our farmers
improve their livelihood, thereby growing together,
a win-win situation!
Thank you for your time, David.
 ERIK ŠIMŠÍK
wanda is a unique case in the contemporary
coffee world, not to mention the world in general.
This specialty coffee phoenix rose from the ashes of
a country devastated after the 1994 genocide in which
one million people died and two million more were
forced to flee their homes, most of them never to return.
Entire towns, infrastructure and industries were wiped
out. The genocide also left an extremely wide generation
gap, probably one of its most dire consequences.
Moreover, almost all the knowledge passed down from
generation to generation for long centuries disappeared.
The Rwandan coffee industry was no exception. While
the coffee trees kept on growing, there was suddenly
nearly nobody who knew what to do with them. Should
they be trimmed? If yes, how? Nor did anybody know
what colour of ripe cherry is suitable for picking or how
to propagate the coffee plants.
However, I do not mean to suggest that Rwandan coffee
used to be of a high quality before the genocide – it wasn’t.
The majority of coffee farmers tended to focus on the
cultivation of below-average coffee. Even the best of
them managed to grow only standard grade coffee.
Specialty coffee did not exist in Rwanda at all.
The Kaffeegenesis
In 1904, German missionaries introduced coffee to
Rwanda. However, they did not bring anything else
besides the trees – no instruction or any other information
on how to treat the trees nor how to process the fruit
they produced.
Rwanda is perfectly situated geographically for
the growing of coffee – fertile volcanic soil, a stable
temperature around 25 °C, high humidity, and an average
altitude of 1,800 metres. All of these conditions are just
about perfect for the cultivation of Arabica. As a result,
the Arabica trees brought by the German missionaries
immediately began to grow. Just like that – naturally –
they flourished everywhere, in the hills or in the forests.
Rwandans processed the coffee fruits in a similar way,
they dry-processed ripe as well as green cherries all
together. Much later, the genocide took place and
Rwandan people lost even the limited knowledge
they had been able to acquire about their coffee trees.
27 / THE COFFEE
ERIK ŠIMŠÍK, LEONHARD WILD
Rwandan rocket
Let’s skip forward. In 2000, current president Paul
Kagame took office for the first time. Despite the fact that
Kagame is a classic example of an African ‘semi-dictator’,
he knew exactly what his country’s economy needed.
In 2002, project PEARL was launched to support
agricultural development in Rwanda. It also aimed
to teach agriculture students how to care for coffee trees,
what cupping is and how to monitor and evaluate
the quality of coffee. The next phase, project SPREAD,
began in 2006 with the goal of continuing the success
of PEARL by educating and training farmers as well as
by building washing stations throughout Rwanda in
order to properly wash and subsequently process
coffee cherries in an appropriate way. Quality was
to be preferred to quantity. To date approximately
50,000 Rwandans have been trained.
Results were evident almost immediately. In 2002,
a farmer made $0.20 per kilogram of coffee sold,
whereas in 2004 that amount grew to $3.40 per
kilogram – the effect of producing higher quality coffee.
The economics could be summarised by stating that
lives of Rwandans improved at least a little bit.
Let us now discuss the quality of the coffee. In 2002,
specialty coffee was practically nonexistent in Rwanda.
Now it’s quite a different story. In 2014, up to 34 %
of Rwanda’s coffee production scored at least 80 points
on the SCAA classification system – a remarkable
turnaround achieved by Rwanda in just 12 years!
Nevertheless, coffee is no longer Rwanda’s main export,
falling behind dairy products and mineral resources.
While the quality of Rwandan coffee continues to increase,
the importance of the coffee industry for the country as
a whole is declining. It is, however, necessary to mention
that Rwanda’s outstanding yogurts, while lesser-known
abroad, are of a similarly high quality as their coffee.
Moreover, Rwanda has become a dairy farm for Central
Africa, producing a lot of milk and dairy products for
export to its neighbors.
The training of coffee farmers continues. Eight hundred
women farmers from southern Rwanda have recently
obtained a diploma from the American organisation
Sustainable Harvest.
In fact the coffee industry in Rwanda has always been
the exclusive domain of women, alongside other
fields. For example, the Rwandan Chamber of Deputies
consists of the highest number of women in the whole
world as they occupy more than half of the seats.
Women’s strong position in Rwandan culture has
historical roots that were further strengthened after
the genocide as far more women than men survived.
The current form of Rwanda as a state is a result
of these women’s efforts.
What is Rwandan coffee like?
Rwandan specialty Bourbon Arabica coffees offer clean
flavours which can easily compete with the best South
American coffees. Chocolate or citrusy tones as well as
glimmers of acidity can often be found. Due to high
sugar content, a fantastic sweetness and fruitiness
are present in the aftertaste. It is almost impossible
to describe the coffee from all around Rwanda in only
two sentences as the high variability in flavours and
aromas this small country offers is often really surprising.
People from Central Europe generally are not very
familiar with Rwanda. They often feel uncomfortable
when thinking about Rwanda as they associate it
primarily with the genocide. However, the Rwandan
coffee industry is really a minor miracle. It is even one
of the most cited examples in textbooks on development
studies. It can be easily seen as well as understood.
Children of coffee farmers have health insurance and
are eduacated. On the other hand, not every citizen
receives the same support as those who work in
the coffee industry. There are still plenty of signs
of extreme poverty in Rwanda and the majority of
Rwandans have never had the experience of drinking
coffee because they simply cannot afford it. Moreover,
neither the concept of a café nor a coffee cart have ever
existed there. It can even be said that Rwandans do not
like the taste of coffee. Nevertheless, there are several
hotels and cafés offering espresso in Kigali, the capital,
which solely use the same dark-roasted beans that can
also be found in shops. The combination of coffee with
ginger and milk, to make a traditional drink called
African ginger coffee, is very interesting.
A budding industry
Positions in the coffee industry are hierarchically
organised – only certain people can own coffee trees or
sell coffee cherries. Hundreds of women work in huge
warehouses where they sit on the ground all day long
and hand-sort coffee according to quality for just over
$1 per day. Warehouse workers, carriers, technicians,
roasters of coffee samples, cuppers, farmers or women
coffee sorters – all of these people help make our spe-
cialty coffee. Most of them work hard and yet remain
poor. Harvest season starts around the end of February
and lasts until the end of June or July. The majority of
28 / ISSUE 2
coffee trees belong to small farmers who each day bring
ripe cherries to washing stations or water mills where
they are sorted and subsequently left to ferment in huge
tanks. Pulp softens as a result, and once it is soft enough
the coffee beans are forced against a strong water current
to free them from any remaining pulp. One recent trend
is in building recycling systems to reuse wastewater
from this process. Finally, the coffee beans are left to dry
in the sun.
In August, the domestic round of the prestigious world
competition Cup of Excellence begins, first held in Rwanda
in 2008. The competition is the single most important
coffee event every year and all high-quality Rwandan
farms are focused on it. Everybody wants their coffee
to win. The competition has led farmers to increase their
quality control as well as offering extra income to the
award-winning farms. At the same time, it enables
roasters and coffee drinkers from all around the world
to discover the best coffees Rwanda has to offer.
Difficulties of farmers
The harvest season ends in August, though the work
goes on. Farmers have to care for their coffee trees,
preparing them for the coming rains as well as treating
the soil and getting them ready for the next growing
season. Cultivation of coffee is a difficult year-long job.
In addition, there are several issues which can harm not
only the farms but deprive people of their livelihood as
well. Soil erosion has been a problem threatening the
entire country for several decades as coffee trees have
been growing everywhere for a long time without any
interruption nor regularisation.
Almost all of Rwanda’s forests except its national parks
have been chopped down as a consequence of
the agricultural boom. Another issue concerns a fungus
which imbues coffee with a potato flavour. Fortunately
coffee drinkers will never have to taste such a coffee
thanks to the regular examination of each day’s harvest
in laboratories at the water mills. In spite of this, the
fungus decreases the amount of coffee that farmers can
sell and, as a result, farmers earn less money to support
their families. Despite the presence of these issues, it’s
heartening that Rwandas are determined to solve and
overcome them as best they can. Rwanda looks idyllic
when you take a walk around the neatly-organised
plantations. Family farms consisting of between hundreds
or just dozens of well-trimmed trees are interlaced with
irrigation canals, and with precisely planted shields to
protect the trees. Despite the fact that one has just spent
two hours tasting Rwandan coffee samples in a laboratory,
you cannot resist and need to brew one more travel
AeroPress – because of the sweet-toned, fruity aftertaste
of Rwandan coffee. Neither death nor discomfort come
to mind now – only pleasant feelings for what Rwandans
have built and achieved for themselves.