Maraba coffee (; ) is grown in the Maraba area of southern Rwanda. Maraba's coffee plants are the Bourbon variety of the Coffea arabica species and are grown on fertile volcanic soils on high-altitude hills. The fruit is handpicked, mostly during the rainy season between March and May, and brought to a washing station in Maraba, where the coffee beans are extracted and dried. At several stages, the beans are sorted according to quality. The farmers receive credits based on the amount and quality of the beans they provide.
The beans are sold to various roasting companies, with the best beans going to Union Coffee Roasters of the United Kingdom, who produce a Fairtrade-certified brand and Community Coffee of the United States. Rwanda Smallholder Specialty Coffee Company (RWASHOSCCO) buys from Maraba and sells to the domestic market. Maraba coffee is also brewed into a beer.
About 500,000 smallholder farmers grow the coffee plants under the Abahuzamugambi cooperative, founded in 1999. Since 2000, the cooperative has been supported by the National University of Rwanda (NUR) and the PEARL. The cooperative has improved coffee quality and penetrated the speciality market.
History
Origins
Rwandans have been growing coffee since colonial times, but until 1999 the product was classed below Grade C, making it unsellable on the global markets. The farmers did not have the means to wash and prepare their coffee cherries to specifications in a timely manner. Buyers paid US$0.33 per kilogram, a price that kept the farmers poor.
In 1999, 220 coffee growers formed an association in the Maraba district (part of the former Butare Province) to tackle this problem. Many of these farmers had lost family members during the 1994 genocide, while others had husbands in prison, accused of participating in the killings and due to face trial in the traditional gacaca courts. They named the association Abahuzamugambi, a Kinyarwanda word for people who work together to achieve a goal. The farmers hoped that by forming the association, they would increase revenue by selling directly to exporters in Kigali instead of through an intermediary transport company. They divided their profits and used them to buy tools, fertilisers and seeds to increase yields.
In 2000, the mayor of Maraba requested development aid from the National University of Rwanda (UNR), based in nearby Butare; the following year UNR helped found the Partnership for Enhancing Agriculture in Rwanda through Linkages (PEARL). Several entities supported the PEARL project: USAID, Michigan State University, Texas A&M University and various Rwandan bodies including UNR, the national agricultural research institute (ISAR) and the Kigali Institute of Science, Technology and Management (KIST). PEARL started working with Abahuzamugambi in February 2001 to improve the coffee quality to standards required by the speciality coffee market in the United States.
The coffee farmers of Maraba first needed a washing station to remove the slimy sugar-rich outer coating of the coffee bean, under the skin. If this sugar is not removed within 12 hours of picking, it may ferment, and the flavour of the coffee is then impaired. They built the first station in July 2001 in the Cyarumbo sector, close to the main road, with funding from UNR, the Office des Cultures Industrielles du Rwanda (OCIR-Café), ACDI/VOCA, and the Institut des Sciences Agronomiques du Rwanda (ISAR). The opening was late in the harvest season, so only 200 kilograms (441 lb) of that year's harvest were suitable for washing. However, the results were reasonably good, and the station was upgraded to allow more coffee to be processed in 2002. To bring mineral water from Mount Huye to the upgraded station, ACDI/VOCA helped fund a pipeline, which opened in March 2002.
A new certification system was introduced for the 2002 harvest to ensure that beans brought to the station were of suitable quality. Around half of the Abahuzamugambi membership attained the certification, which allowed the cooperative to look for serious buyers in the speciality markets of Europe and North America.