Greengo, Gakenke, Rwanda

About

Founded in 2004 in Musasa, at an altitude of over 2,000 metres, it brings together over 1,100 farmers. The cooperative is located just 50 km north of Kigali as the crow flies, but after more than 22 hours on winding tracks. At this cooperative, the water used to wash the coffee is reused. The cooperative encourages farmers to reforest their plots and plant shade trees. When a farmer leaves the cooperative with a coffee plant, he also gets a shade tree. The cooperative has also set up a system of financial aid with the creation of a “Farmers saving account”: the possibility of taking out a small low-interest loan with the cooperative. Dunkunde Kawa is also behind the “Musasa Milk” project, which helps to diversify farmers’  income by giving them a cow.

The Station Mbilima

The Mbilima washing station belongs to the Dukunde Kawa Musasa cooperative, established in 2005. Dedicated to certified organic coffees. It was created to help local farmers in the village of Akanduga, nicknamed Rubyiniro. 

The station stands at 2020 meters above sea level, making it one of the highest in Rwanda, and works with 900 farmers over an area of 70 hectares. Mbilima employs 120 seasonal workers, 95% of whom are women. 

Most coffee growers carry their harvest on their heads, with only a few using bicycles. Farmers bring their harvest to site collectors in neighboring villages, who then transport the coffee by motorcycle within 8 hours of harvesting.

Annual coffee production varies between 450 and 650 tonnes, allowing 4 to 5 containers of exportable green coffee to be processed each year.

At Mbilima, the coffee is sorted by gravity and then mechanically pulped, before being dried on one of the station’s 120 drying beds. Coffee can be processed washed, natural, honey and anaerobic. Depending on the type of process and weather conditions, drying times vary from 25 to 60 days.