Coffee production in Rwanda has had a distinctly bloody history. Here’s a little background.
Our favorite plant was brought to Rwanda by German colonists in 1905. In the early 1920s, competition with South American producers led to a rapid increase in production levels. Colonial rulers incited ethnic tension between Tutsi and Hutu through coffee farming;Tutsi leaders were rewarded for demanding their Hutu subjects farm the crop, and forced them to work on coffee plantations in addition to paying high taxes to their chiefs. By the 1930s, the Hutu were a heavily segregated and poverty-stricken people.
By 1956 the injustice experienced by the Hutus was far too great for the world to ignore. The UN stepped in to provide aid and education to the group, which led to the creation of a coffee cooperative called “Trafipro.” By this point, coffee had become Rwanda’s most lucrative source of foreign income. The cooperative was intended to provide support to Hutu farmers; however, Trafipro was primarily controlled by Tutsi officials, who reaped most of the benefits of increases in coffee sales. Though the first Hutu president was elected in 1957, little was done to assist impoverished Hutu, and massive inequality between the ethnic groups persisted. In 1966, in an attempt to gain Hutu authority over the crop, control of coffee production and export was relegated to the state. The coffee produced was very poor quality, and farmers had little incentive to improve their harvesting and processing methods.
In the 1970s, coffee production was privatized and again lead to great economic disparities between wealthy landowners and poor farmers. This time, profits from the nation’s largest export were cast toward elite northern Hutu officials. Tutsi coffee farmers and southern Hutus faced starvation and suffered from disease, and when a drought in the late 1980s annihilated the country’s agricultural production, ethnic tensions rose to crippling levels. World Bank and IMF aid was provided to the Rwandan government to help stimulate the economy and reawaken coffee production; instead, this money was used to arm Hutu soldiers.
Aristocratic owners of coffee-producing lands were also largely responsible for importing machetes and other weapons into the country. In the early 1990s, a collapse in international coffee prices provided the economic climate for ethnic tensions rise to explosive levels. In 1994, the weapons purchased by the Hutu government and elite land owners were used to slaughter over 500,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, about 20% of Rwanda’s total population. Countless others fled to neighboring countries.
Coffee production was inextricably tied to ethnic violence in Rwanda. Now, nearly twenty years later, new cooperatives have emerged to help the nation recover. We’re pleased to offer coffee from one of these groups, the Dukunde Kawa Cooperative. Located adjacent to a gorilla habitat in the Ruli sector of Gakenke (how cool is that?!), beans from Dukunde Kawa have been turning heads in the specialty coffee community for years.
Dukunde Kawa was founded in 2000, just six years after genocide ravished the country. The cooperative had 300 farmers in 2003; as of last year, over 1800 producers contribute their coffee cherries to the organization’s four washing stations. 10% of the organization’s net profit goes towards constructing washing stations in other parts of Rwanda. Cup quality over the past few years has radically improved at the cooperative, and has elevated their product from commodity to specialty grade. This is due largely to farmer-driven efforts to institute sustainable farming methods and to cooperative-supported improvements in washing and processing. These improvements have resulted in a price-per-kilo that is nearly 18 times higher than what farmers received for the same coffee ten years ago.
Over 80% of Dukunde Kawa’s producers are women, most of whom are widows of the genocide. With an increase in profit going directly to the farmers, these women can now afford health care for their families. In 2006, the cooperative constructed two schools to provide education to children of its producers. It provides bicycles to farmers to facilitate transfer of coffee cherries to the washing stations, and has invested in housing projects to replace the grass roofs of the producers’ homes with tile ones.
We’re lucky to have an great relationship with our importers, and are fortunate that CAFÉ IMPORTS has established a relationship with Dukunde Kawa. We chose to buy green coffee from the cooperative for a number of reasons. As a company, we strive to be aware and supportive of our producers; after all, we wouldn’t be around if it weren’t for their exhaustive efforts. We’re proud to offer this coffee, not just because we want to assist in the economic recovery of Rwanda, not only because we want to provide an income to women whose families were shattered by violence, not simply because it represents a shift towards sustainability in coffee production. We’re proud to offer this coffee because it shows that a harrowing history can be transformed into something beautiful.
Over the years, some of our favorite roasters have featured coffee from Dukunde Kawa- MADCAP, HANDSOME, and DOGWOOD, to name only a few. One of the things we find so striking about this coffee is its versatility. Each of these roasters has put forth a dramatically different product than each of the others. Coffee from the same cooperative, even from the same washing station, can be roasted to enhance wildly different (and delicious) attributes. We prefer to draw attention to this coffee’s tea-like floral tones, brown sugar body, and clean finish.
