One of this year’s suite of coffees from the boutique Kivubelt group in western Rwanda, this lot comes from smallholder farmers nearby to Kivubelt's original estates. After establishing their own coffee estates in the Gihombo area, Kivubelt acquired 2 local washing stations to capture coffee long produced by surrounding smallholders, often grown at higher elevations than their own farms. Jarama Coffee Washing Station (Jarama CWS) is one of them, servicing coffee from a few specific smallholder communities nearby. At Kivubelt these are affectionately called "People's Farms”, a clever way of illustrating the collective nature of a tight-knit smallholder community.
Nyamasheke District
The Nyamasheke district in Rwanda is gifted in terroir. The cool, humid climates of both Lake Kivu and the Nyungwe Forest National Park keep precipitation and groundwater abundant throughout the uniquely dense, hilly region. Lake Kivu itself is part of the East African Rift whose consistent drift creates volcanic seepage from the lake’s bottom and enriches the surrounding soils. Coffees from this region are often fuller, jammier in balance and more layered than in the rest of the country.
Nyamasheke, like other districts along the lake, includes breathtakingly beautiful shorelines chiseled into steeply terraced agricultural escarpments. Fishing, maritime commerce with nearby Democratic Republic of Congo, coffee, and tourism industries keep the Kivu shores lively at all times.
Kivubelt Coffee
Kivubelt was established in 2011 by Furaha Umwizey, after returning to Rwanda with a master’s degree in economics from Switzerland. Born and raised in Rwanda, Umwizey’s goal with Kivubelt is to create a model coffee plantation, as sustainable in agriculture as it is impactful in local employment and empowerment.
Kivubelt began with the acquisition of 200 scattered acres of farmland in Gihombo, a community in Rwanda’s Nyamasheke district that runs along the central shoreline of Lake Kivu. Under Umwizey’s leadership, Kivubelt has planted 90,000 coffee trees on their estates, which now employ more than 400 people during harvest months and is a kind of coffee vocational school for local smallholders interested in improving their farming.
“People's Farm” Coffees & Processing
After establishing their own estates, Kivubelt acquired two washing stations in the immediate area, Murundo CWS and Jarama CWS. Combined, these 2 stations service more than 500 smallholders coffee farmers in the region. 60 of these smallholders make up the Kadobogo community, who, combined, grow 20,000 coffee trees on a total of 8 hectares of farmland, ranging between 0.15 and 0.8 hectares apiece—indeed some of the smallest coffee farmers on the planet.
Kivubelt offers quality premiums and training programs for participating farming families. Smallholder coffee processed at the washing stations has come to be affectionately known as “People's Farm” coffee, to acknowledge the teamwork required of smallholders and processors who, when acting together, can have the same commanding presence as a larger single estate. Kadobogo is organized into 3 different sub-groups, who receive a rotation of trainings on things like best farming practices and financial literacy, all financed and organized by Kivubelt. In addition, 20,000 coffee seedlings are distributed among Kadobogo farmers each year for free, to encourage farm renovation.
Washed coffee at Jarama CWS is considered traditional for this area. Fresh picked coffee cherry is delivered daily to the station where it is hand-sorted and weighed, and then floated for density. Once prepped, cherry is depulped and dry-fermented overnight. The next morning the parchment is washed clean and graded again by density in long cement channels under running water. The cleaned parchment is then dried on raised beds until the moisture content reaches 11%., at which point it is removed to Kivubelt’s on-site warehouses to condition in a cool environment as it awaits sampling and transit.
