Technoserve
Farmers sorting coffee beans at a Technoserve cooperative
Most Rwandans are poor farmers.
And most depend upon growing coffee for half or more of their annual income.
A four-year-old social enterprise project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation appears to be helping farmers significantly increase their income by taking better advantage of this mountainous nation’s fairly unique ability to grow the best coffee in the world.
By geographical happenstance — very high elevations and wet, tropical weather – Rwanda’s unlike almost any other place when it comes to growing coffee. But until recently, few coffee farmers here were making the most of their advantage.
“Now we’re seeing some farmers earning up to three times more than they were before we started working with them,” said Paul Stewart, regional director of the Technoserve Coffee Initiative in Rwanda.
Overall, Stewart said, the incomes of participating farmers have increased by 70 percent over the last four years.
Technoserve is a non-profit organization devoted to helping the poor make a profit. It’s been around a long time, created in 1968 by an American businessman who felt the best way to fight poverty was to help the poor improve their business prospects.
In 2007, the Gates Foundation gave Stewart and his colleagues at Technoserve a $47 million grant to apply their strategy in Rwanda – to see if showing farmers how to boost the quality of coffee could put a big dent in poverty. The first step is showing them how to properly care for the newly picked coffee beans. Continue reading