Rwanda Keeps Coffee Together

This was during a recent meeting on Friday March 16, of over 60 coffee dealers and development partners in Butare town. The meeting discussed issues related to increasing coffee production, improving the quality, washing techniques and commercialisation.

The meeting was jointly organised by Rwanda Development Bank (BRD), and the Sustaining Partnerships to enhance Rural Enterprise and Agribusiness Development (SPREAD), a project which helps Rwandan farmers to improve the value of coffee and supports partnerships with western coffee dealers.

It brought together the Government officials, bankers from BRD, coffee farmers, directors of coffee washing stations, and different coffee specialists.

Many participants said all stakeholders in coffee production should care about its quality as it remains the country's major export.

Etienne Bihogo who runs the Rwanda Small Holder Specialty Coffee Company (RWASHOSCCO), a Rwandan coffee marketing company, said the country needs to export a well tasted coffee to fetch more revenues. "If only we can agree on our coffee grades in the whole country, it can help us to better sell it," he said.

According to managers of coffee washing stations, government should help in stopping traditional ways of washing coffee practiced by some local farmers in different villages. They say the practice is the major cause of bad quality of coffee at the international market.

"Those practices have limited us from producing good quality coffee," said one of the coffee washing stations manager. "The government should ban them".

But some authorities said coffee dealers are not organised in cooperatives and this has made coffee control tasks difficult for them. "Why don't you vote your representatives at different levels so that we can contact you?" said Jeanne Izabiriza, the Provincial Executive Secretary.

Minister of Commerce, Protais Mitari said the government is looking at how to ask all coffee growers and dealers to group them-selves into cooperatives. He said that government aims at assisting cooperatives rather than one independent person.

Mitari insisted that Rwanda needs to increase the quantity of coffee it produces.

"There is a problem in production and we need to sit with OCIR-Café and see why!" he said. "We are yet to put much effort in growing coffee".

Rwanda exported more than 26 thousand tonnes of coffee last year and it earned Rwf 29 billions.

Emmanuel Maniragaba, production manager with the government's coffee umbrella OCIR-Café, said rwandan coffee may reduce in quantity this year but rise in quality.

"We need ten thousand tonnes of good coffee," he said.

Presently, Rwanda counts 79 coffee washing stations. Maniragaba said it should have at least 120 coffee washing stations by the end of this year and at least 240 by 2008.

But he said the country still lacks technicians to process good quality coffee, especially in the tasting process.

"We would love to have coffee tasters at every coffee washing station in the country but they are very few" said Maniragaba, hastening to add that OCIR-Café has plans to train many coffee tasters. There are about nine cuppers in the whole country and only two cupping stations.

One of those nine cuppers, Claire Kampeta, recently said that they are playing a critical role in processing good quality coffee.

"The country is getting hard currencies because of cuppers," she said. "We used to sell our coffee without tasting it and clients were paying poorly to farmers".

SPREAD, a six year project funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) is currently working with private coffee cooperatives to improve the quality of coffee.

"We have a strategy to help private cooperatives to control their coffee quality in different areas of the country," he said. "There are enough equipments we still have in our stores that can help." He said the project will work with coffee cooperatives in Western, Southern and Eastern provinces as well as the central region of the country.

Jean Baptiste Iyakaremye, a farmer from Rwamagana District, said he will call up on other farmers to stop harming coffee's quality. "We need to change the way we work in our cooperatives," he said. "We will sensitize farmers to bring their coffee to washing stations instead of washing them at home."Iyakaremye's plan while back in Rwamagana is also the greatest recommendation made by coffee stakeholders on Friday in Butare.