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Rwanda: Coffee Comes of Age
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The Monitor (Kampala)
22 July 2008
Posted to the web 23 July 2008
David Kezio-Musoke
Rwanda's coffee industry was blessed with Starbucks' launch of Rwanda's coffee called the Blue Bourbon Coffee, across most of its stores in the Middle East.
Starbucks is the largest coffee processing and distributor of the world class gourmet coffees sourced from the best coffee growing regions of the world.
Starbucks said last week that the production and sale of Rwanda's high-quality coffee will significantly help Rwanda's economy, and enable Rwandan farmers to improve their homes, afford medical care and provide educational opportunities for their children, through these Starbucks awards.
With its high elevation, traditional Arabica Bourbon trees, rich soil and good rainfall, Rwanda is ideal for growing high-quality coffee. Rwanda is a land where 90 per cent of the people work one-acre plots for subsistence.
Rwanda's coffee is grown by smallholders - farmers with about 175 trees per farm. This rare Bourbon coffee is grown between Lake Kivu and the Nyungwe Forest in the south west of the country, in central Africa.
"Starbucks first visited Rwanda in 2004 to sample coffees and assess Rwanda's potential as a coffee supplier to its growing global network of stores. Within two years we were able to sell our first coffee grown in the country, and here we are with this special coffee offered to our customers in the Middle East," said Mr Antoun Abou Jaoude, the marketing manager of Starbucks Middle East and Egypt.
"Rwanda's future grows brighter with each harvest of specialty coffee, which accounts for seven per cent of the country's total coffee exports. Therefore this new rare and exotic coffee is not only a great cup - it is the source of hope for a brighter future for Rwanda."
Rwanda Blue Bourbon has a subtle acidity and a herbal, spicy complexity not typically found in the coffees of East Africa.
"Blue" refers to the blue-green colour of the unroasted coffee cherries produced at the washing stations while "Bourbon" refers to the Bourbon variety of the Arabica species.
The coffee industry in Rwanda has in the past decade been one of the leading foreign exchange earners. Figures from the Rwanda Investment and Export Promotion Agency (RIEPA), indicate that last year alone coffee attracted some $ 35.6m in foreign receipts alone.
Starbucks revelation also comes just months to Kigali's hosting of the 1st international 'Cup of Excellence' (COE) competition event on the African continent. Officials of OCIR Café, the Coffee Marketing agency in Rwanda said the Cup of Excellency is expected to attract players who are directly linked with specialty niche markets.
The COE is an internationally sanctioned and highly prestigious coffee competition and online auction of the best specialty coffees in the world.
The COE competition judging by Rwanda's national panel will be between the 18th to the August 22. International panel judging will be between the 24th to the 29th of August.
Both national and international judging will take place at the Rwandan Small Holder Specialty Coffee Company's facility in Huye, Butare.
As part of Cup of Excellence event activities, a National Coffee Day celebration on 29th of August will be followed by a post-competition awards ceremony at the Serena Hotel in Kigali.
During the competition winning coffees are selected through a three-stage process, which begins with pre-selection and is followed by judging by a national and international panel of jurors.
"The Cup of Excellence competition cycle was conceived with the purpose of finding masterpiece lots of coffee from hundreds of entries," said George H. Howell, co-creator of the COE and its first head judge.
Non-winning coffees from the COE competition are sold at a live auction whereas winning ones are sold via an Internet auction. The COE will therefore be a unique opportunity for Rwandan farmers to put more efforts in producing quality leading to further high quality coffee.
This year's international panel will consist of 24 judges, including coffee experts from the U.S., U.K., France, The Netherlands, Japan and Guatemala, said organizers.
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The COE competition has existed for many years in countries like Colombia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Brazil, Honduras and Costa Rica.
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