The premium prices paid for specialist coffees will help reduce rural poverty.

Coffee has been Rwanda’s big success story of recent years, and offers the prospect of a promising future for the country’s half a million smallholder coffee growers and their families.

Rwanda has near-perfect growing conditions for the production of Robusta and Arabica coffees. Most of the coffee the country exports is semi-washed. Specialty, or “fully- washed” coffee currently represents only a small proportion, but the growing market for gourmet coffees, especially in the United States, is now being targeted.

Coffee from Rwanda is already selling well at shops throughout the United States. The best-known type from Rwanda is Maraba Arabica Bourbon, renowned for its deep flavor.

With the government’s support, the USAID-funded project Partnership to Enhance Agriculture in Rwanda through Linkages (PEARL) has helped thousands of Rwandan smallholders, many of them genocide widows, to organize themselves into cooperatives. Community coffee-washing stations have been established, where the coffee cherries are hand-sorted, washed, and dried to produce high quality coffee. Income for the cooperatives is rising fast; from $650,000 in 2004 it is expected to reach $3 million in 2006.

Alain Vigneron, Managing Director of Rwandex, Rwanda’s biggest coffee producer and exporter, is confident that Rwanda will be recognized as the source of some of the world’s best coffee.

ALAIN VIGNERON Managing Director of Rwandex

“Our vision is that in the future people will buy high quality Rwandan coffee in the same way that they currently purchase Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee,” he says. “We started to commercialize the Thousand Hills brand at the end of last year.”

Rwandex, which accounts for up to 60 percent of Rwanda’s coffee exports, is working hard to increase its production of fully-washed coffee, and has plans to establish more washing stations along Lake Kivu. “This is where you find the best coffee in Rwanda,” says Mr. Vigneron. There are also plans to extend Rwandex’s factory at Gisenyi.

In addition to promoting gourmet coffee, Rwandex is also concerned that its semi-washed coffee has maximum appeal. “When we export semi-washed coffee, we want to ensure that it is a very high quality product,” Mr. Vigneron says.

Founded in 1967, Rwandex exports coffee to Europe, the United States and Asia. At the time of going to press, the company was in the final stages of privatization, with the government selling its 51% shareholding to private investors.

Rwandex is also very conscious of its role in promoting the image of Rwanda abroad as an ecotourism haven. One of its most significant gestures is the ‘adoption’ of a young gorilla named Itetero. For every kilo of Thousands Hills coffee sold, Rwandex donates one U.S. dollar to the Office for the Promotion of Tourism and National Parks (ORTPN), for their efforts in the conservation of the gorillas’ population.