Rwanda is one of the fastest growing economies in Africa, with coffee being a major driver—this, despite the fact that 39 percent of her population still lives below the poverty line. The country is also one of the most densely populated in Africa and one of the smallest, about the size of the State of Maryland in the United States. According to USAID, 430,000 families in Rwanda grow and depend on coffee for their livelihood with each family having a farm size of less than a hectare and fewer than 200 coffee trees. If you visit Rwanda—especially along the shores of Lake Kivu in September and October—you will notice the beautiful white flowers with the characteristic scent of jasmine and citrus blossoms. Between March and July, the flowers have developed to succulent coffee cherries ready for harvest.
However, behind this beautiful scene, the smallholder farmers in Rwanda face major challenges such as poor-quality, low, and unpredictable yields from their coffee trees due to poor agricultural practices and regenerative farming techniques. They also face challenges at the coffee washing mills due to ineffective operation standards and lack of access to finance. These challenges mean the farmers do not get higher value for their coffee and find it difficult to navigate from the cycle of abject poverty. Now a major new initiative is helping to change things: the Ikawa Nziza Cyane (INC) or “Best Quality Coffee” Project, whose goal is unlocking the coffee potential in Rwanda to make the country a better coffee producer and consumer.
The Rwanda Best Quality Coffee Project (INC)
The Rwanda INC is a four-year project implemented by TechnoServe and funded by the European Union, JDE Peet’s, and the government of Rwanda. It is now in its final year and time to reflect on its achievements.
“Rwanda INC is a market systems project, designed to strengthen the Rwandan coffee sector by providing training, digital tools, and advice to key actors in the [coffee] sector,” Elijah Townsend, the Regional Program Director for Coffee at TechnoServe tells Sprudge Media. “The goal of the project is that these entities will boost the income of coffee farmers throughout Rwanda by driving improved coffee quality,” he adds, “[by creating] better knowledge of regenerative farming practices, higher coffee prices, and a healthier, more resilient, coffee sector.”
This market systems project differs from a direct farmer training program, Townsend explains, in that it is designed to bolster the broader sector and work through existing actors, rather than directly working with farmers. While the focus was working with existing businesses and government agencies, the project also worked with young men and women, to prepare them for careers in the coffee sector. By training youth in coffee processing and facilitating internships, the project has helped build the next generation of coffee professionals in Rwanda, improving quality and knowledge throughout the sector.
The Challenges Faced by Coffee Farmers in Rwanda
Rwanda, like her neighbor the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is working to become the Democratic Republic of Coffee, has all the potential to become an authority in the specialty coffee sector. With her rich volcanic soil, high altitude, and favorable climate for coffee, the country can use coffee to continue the recovery from the aftermath of the 1990s civil wars. However, farmers in the country face many challenges that the project seeks to eliminate as Townsend tells us:
“A major challenge in Rwanda is that farmers cannot afford sufficient fertilizer and lime needed to increase coffee production. [Although] the government subsidizes fertilizer for coffee farms, it isn’t enough to meet the needs of every farmer, requiring farmers to purchase lime and additional fertilizer. Our work with One Acre Fund and coffee exporters, to pilot access to fertilizer and lime on credit through wet mills is working to address this, as well as improving access to high-quality sources of lime through testing and sharing information on local sources of high-quality lime.”
Rwanda INC Project Partnerships
For better and concerted efforts toward making Rwanda a producer of the best quality coffee, Rwanda INC is working with other partners. One of these partners is the Coffee Quality Institute (CQI). Created 20 years ago, its mission is to provide tools and a common language to the different actors in the coffee value chain, so that they can improve their lives, getting the most out of this wonderful product. This non-profit offers two coffee certifications; “a Q Certificate used to communicate between buyers and sellers, and a Q Coffee licensing program to communicate quality to consumers” providing an industry standard for coffee evaluation.
“In particular, the part that concerns us, in the value chain, is the coffee production, processing, and export,” Ephrem Sebatigita, the CQI Certification Program Instructor and Founder of Coffee Belt East Africa, tells Sprudge Media. “Rwanda INC Project creates shared value for farmers, businesses, lenders, and regulators by strengthening Rwanda’s competitiveness in specialty coffee,” continues Sebatigita. “Specifically, this is done through introducing digital mobile technologies, input distribution schemes, and quality standards and policies.”
According to Sebatigita, CQI has delivered seven Q Processing Professional Level 2 courses to coffee washing stations (CWS) managers and exporters, and six Generalist Processing Level 1, training youth at venues such as polytechnic institutes and agricultural universities, as well as provided input and guidance to the development of a set of minimum quality standards for CWS in Rwanda in partnership with Rwanda INC Project. Additionally, the partnership has trained over 60 students on quality coffee processing techniques, with over half completing youth internships in the coffee sector.
“The internship offered me the opportunity to understand a lot about how the processing works,” Bosco Nsabimana, one of the student beneficiaries of the program told TechnoServe, adding that the support encouraged him to get more interest in coffee. “My plan now is to do more research about how I can invest in it after my studies.”
The Rwanda INC Project Milestones
The project has done a great deal in its mission to drive Rwanda into the coffee world market limelight.
Per Townsend, the project has launched the Digital Farm Extension Management System (D-FEMS), a digital tool built into the Rwandan government’s SKS [Smart Kungahara System] a digital platform that provides field agronomists with a tool for monitoring farmer adoption of regenerative farming practices. This was launched among 50 wet mills and will be scaled up country-wide by the Rwanda government’s National Agricultural Export Board (NAEB), according to Townsend. He adds that the project has also provided training and advisory support to construct 19 vetiver wetlands at coffee wet mills to improve waste-water management.
Other project achievements include supporting 50 coffee wet mills to distribute two million improved variety coffee seedlings to nearly 10,000 farmers and publishing the Rwanda Quality & Sustainability Guidelines for Coffee Washing Stations, a manual that provides a comprehensive set of guidelines for all Rwandan processors to improve quality and sustainability of their processing activities, along with auditing tools to validate their practices. The project is directly making 50,000 smallholder farmers smile their way to the bank, and 400,000 others indirectly.
Looking Ahead
Through the project initiatives, Townsend has noted an interesting and encouraging trend in Rwanda – the steady increase in prices received by coffee farmers over the last 3-5 years, with minimum cherry prices increasing from 248 RWF (25 cents) per kilogram of coffee cherry in 2021 to 480 RWF (37 cents) in 2024, an increase of nearly 50%.
This demonstrates a combination of higher global prices, increasing demand for Rwandan coffee, and improving cost-efficiency at coffee wet mills. It also presents a great opportunity for Rwandan coffee farmers who invest in their farms by adopting regenerative farming practices and applying lime and fertilizers.
“A market systems project like Rwanda INC is an investment in the future – you won’t see major shifts in the short term, but building digital tools, industry standards, and the capacity of people can produce compounding benefits in the years to come,” says Townsend, concluding that “I’m personally excited to see what the next generation of Rwandan coffee professionals—young women and men who completed the CQI processing training and internships—will do as they grow in experience and lead the sector into the future.”
Daniel Muraga is an anthropologist and freelance journalist based in Nairobi.