Rwanda’s Government Promotes A Coffee Culture

If you have a good thing on the go, it is easy to maintain the status quo.

For coffee farmers in Rwanda, it is a simple case of putting in the hours out in the field and reaping the financial rewards once the beans go off to the export market.

However, there is a movement to keep more coffee within their borders.

An initiative, led by the Rwandan government, is trying to encourage the general population to buy into coffee.

Gerardine Mukeshimana, the current minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources, stated that with the volatility of the global market, promoting and securing a domestic-based coffee culture could secure a long-term, sustainable revenue stream for the industry.

“You don’t want to be in a situation that if they go down, your whole economy is disturbed. 

“You have to have a plan B,” she said.

Over the course of the past few years, the government has been sponsoring adverts that promote locally sourced coffee.

“If we have a finished product that is made in Rwanda, I think that it’s a pride to consume that product instead of sending the best quality abroad,” said Kayuma Polepole.

The plan seems to be working.

Naturally, there are problems.

The price of coffee – while inexpensive to Western consumers – is too high for the majority of the population. This means that those populating the nation’s burgeoning coffee shops tend to be the upper classes and foreign nations.

Part of the reason for the cost being high is the quality of the beans – they do fetch a good price on export markets after all.

Yet infrastructure is another issue: Most of the beans used by Rwandan baristas are imported, even if they have been grown just down the road. This is because the country lacks the necessary facilities to roast coffee en masse, meaning that people have to import roasted Rwandan coffee from European and American suppliers.

For some, though, coffee drinking just isn’t part of the local culture.

“We didn’t drink coffee because we didn’t know anything about how to drink coffee,” explains Fabien Ntawuruhunga.