ONIBUS COFFEE RWANDA / Nkara 1004

The Dukunde Kawa (which means "I love coffee" in Kinyarwanda) cooperative is located in the Gakenke district in northern Rwanda.

The cooperative has three bean washing stations, and the coffee refining work is carried out in one of them - Nkala bean washing station.

At Dukunde Kawa, profits from coffee are not only returned to cooperative members, but are also actively used for capital investment.

The cooperative has a dry mill (for threshing), a cupping lab for quality testing, and a café. When I last visited, the cooperative was building a kindergarten. Through these activities, they have been able to produce consistently high-quality coffee.

Dukunde Kawa and ONIBUS are working together on the "Soil Project". Launched in 2022, this soil improvement project aims to address the chronic fertilizer shortage faced by Rwanda's coffee production and improve the soil environment for sustainable coffee production in Rwanda. ONIBUS provides a wide range of support, from technical guidance to help farmers make and apply their own organic compost from coffee grounds, to financial assistance to support the project's continuation and secure sales channels.

This batch of coffee is one of the first memorable coffee trees of the Soil Project. We collected the coffee cherries that grew into coffee trees after fertilizing them with homemade organic compost and separated them into different batches to distinguish them from other batches.
It’s difficult to measure the effects of compost alone, as coffee quality is affected by many factors, including climate and refining, but the exceptional quality of this batch of coffee from Project Soil is worth pursuing.

We hope you enjoy this coffee tree from Project Soil, our collaborative effort with farmers that begins with the creation of the soil.