Last Morning in Kigali
It’s my last morning in Kigali. Life is good. I’m healthy, strong and the top of my head isn’t too sun burnt.
Yesterday morning I was being toured around a cooperative’s region via a boat on Lake Kivu. This is in Rwanda’s volcanic region in the west. The soil there is amazing. You just want to roll around in it! It also just happens to the home to the country’s best coffee.
We visited five cooperatives in the last few days. I was with the producer realtions manager of Cooperative Coffees, Monika Firl, as she has been trying to increase her understanding of where the different cooperatives are, and where they are heading, in terms of the parameters that cooperative coffees supports. The first priority is that they be a producer cooperative, and not a private plantation. The other conditions they look for before commiting to a relationship are: is the producer cooperative taking steps to improve the quality of their coffee; are they organic, or transitioning to organic; and, are they a Fair Trade certified producer.
It is a huge understatement to say that the coffee industry in general, and the Fair Trade industry specifically, is a complex system. As Rwanda is just re-emerging into the specialty coffee market the farmers, the cooperatives and the bureaucracy in Kigali are all showing signs of growing pains as they try to navigate this head-spinning global market. Some of these pains are unavoidable, and some of them are unique to the economic and political culture of Rwanda. There is a tendency here for top down control, and many times a wrong decision, or the lack of one, in the ministry of agriculture can really hurt the development in the coffee sector.
I’ll write more about this in detail on another day. I’ll also be posting images and more reflection on the country in general. For the most part, Rwanda is a beautiful place with friendly people. There is a lot of work to be done to rebuild the country, but there is a strong sense of trust that the country as a whole is on the right path.