Rwanda Busanze

Busanze is a quality-focused washery that has contributed significantly to enabling Rwanda to develop its full coffee potential. And the same seems to be true for Busanze itself.

The station has been designed to efficiently collect ripe coffee cherries from hundreds of smallholder farmers who grow coffee on small plots of land. Thanks to this system, even these small growers can participate in the world market, which would otherwise be almost impossible. About 20 years ago, Rwanda realised that washing stations could be more than just places to process coffee - they could play a vital role in quality management. Much of the credit for this shift goes to the support of a few specialist roasters.

The Busanze washing station that processed this coffee was established in 2018. It was then that it processed a lot of coffee grown by the KUN cooperative in the Nteko region, which came seventh in the prestigious Rwanda Cup of Excellence competition. The acronym KUN stands for Koperative Umurego Nteko - translated as "Cooperative Strength of Nteko". The cooperative has 412 members, 51 of whom are women, and women also play an important role in its leadership. This force is therefore largely female.