Victoria Mukamurenzi
Sparkling tropical acidity, with green apple, honey and a juicy body. Jasmine and lemon blossom fragrance.
It is very rare to be able to get a coffee that is traceable back to a single producer in Rwanda, so we feel extremely fortunate to be able to share this special lot from Victoria Mukamurenzi’s farm Kinyonzo-Jango.
Most of the coffees we source from Rwanda are traceable back to a washing station, or sometimes a farmer group. Most washing stations in Rwanda receive cherry from hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of farmers who own very small plots of land – on average less than a quarter hectare, with just 300-600 coffee trees. Separation of such tiny lots is expensive and impractical, so the large majority of coffees are processed as a mixed lot from multiple producers. Typically, lots are separated as day lots (ie. cherries that were all picked on the same day) rather than by a single farm or producer group.
Single producer microlots like this one are difficult to access, especially from such a small producer (Victoria owns 300 trees). One of the reasons this lot separation is possible is that Victoria is a member of the Dukunde Kawa Cooperative, who operate their own dry mill, where they can process smaller lots individually, whilst minimising cost and maintaining excellent quality standards.
As the daughter of farmers, Victoria began working in coffee from a very young age – learning the ropes from when she was just a toddler in the 1980s. She was always passionate about coffee, as she told us on our most recent visit, “I have lived like this since my childhood. My parents were also coffee farmers. I used to go together with my parents to the coffee fields, and I found that coffee is what that made us grow as a family – it was our only source of income.” As she grew up, she became more involved with the farm’s activities until she eventually found job at a coffee nursery, where she would look after seedlings and young coffee trees.
As a child, Victoria saw her parents undertake great effort to grow, process and sell their coffee crop. At this time, coffee production was extremely arduous for Rwandan coffee farmers. Processing was labour-intensive and lengthy, with very little equipment, training or resources available to rural farming communities. Typically, coffee cherries were depulped by hand using stones and parchment was dried at farm level, before being sold to a middleman or ‘broker’ who would then on sell the coffee to traders or exporters based in Kigali. Not only did this result in a long and challenging harvest season for individual farmers, it also denied them any leverage for negotiating prices to achieve a fair and reliable income.
With the forming of cooperatives like Dukunde Kawa, farmers were provided with the support, education and resources necessary to adopt better farming practices, and processing moved to centralised washing stations – where shared infrastructure, equipment and adequate labour both minimised the workload for individuals and dramatically improved the coffee’s quality.
Once married, Victoria and husband Theobald Habineza began to take care of land he had inherited from his parents. Because coffee was already planted, Victoria knew if they put their minds into it, they could expand the plantation and earn an income from coffee, as her family had when she was growing up. In 2002, her husband got a job at a construction site near their home — which turned out to be Dukunde Kawa Cooperative’s Ruli washing station. Victoria’s husband started working for the co-op on a full-time basis after the building was complete, and the pair have been closely linked to the cooperative ever since.
In 2010, when the co-op was sourcing handwoven baskets, they reached out to Victoria, who was known to be a maker and seller of handicrafts. After she sold some of her stock to Dukunde Kawa, she brought up the idea that, rather than sourcing baskets from outsiders, they should be teaching members how to make them so that the co-op could produce their own baskets, because this could create an opportunity for additional income.
After this interaction, Victoria and Theobald joined Dukunde Kawa the following year. Becoming members of the co-op was empowering for the couple, as they began to earn fair and reliable prices for the coffee they farmed together, as well as training in financial literacy, gender equality, coffee farming and market access. That same year (2011), the cooperative founded Rambagirakawa women’s group, and Victoria was one of the first members to join. A savvy and entrepreneurial woman, Victoria’s idea of teaching fellow Rambagira members to weave baskets and handicrafts was well-received by the group — particularly by her neighbour and Rambagirakawa founder Odette Murekatete. The pair already knew each other from attending the same church, but as they began to work more closely at the co-op, they became inseparable.
Today, Victoria and Odette never go more than a couple of days without seeing each other, and basket weaving is one of Rambagirakawa’s main income-generating activities. Victoria’s leadership within the group was recognised when she was named Vice-President of Rambagirakawa. In this role, she assists in the managing of the group’s finances, liaises with Dukunde Kawa’s leadership on behalf of the group, and develops projects to benefit the women who form part of the alliance.
As Victoria got more involved with the co-op, who were heavily promoting women’s coffee lots, she brought up the idea to her husband and decided to establish her own plot of land. Initially, she tended to a selection of trees already established — but in 2018, using knowledge she had gained working with coffee for many years, and with the advice of Dukunde Kawa’s team of agronomists, she established her own nursery at home, using seedlings that had grown from cherries she had harvested herself. Victoria was eventually able to plant 300 trees from the nursery, separate from her husband’s, which she tends to with the support of her fellow Rambagirakawa members. Her first harvest arrived in 2023, producing some 200kg of cherry — which had tripled by 2024, when we last visited!
Operations at the farm are methodical and precise, as taught by Dukunde Kawa’s agronomists. During the harvest, only the ripest cherries are selected and great care is taken to ensure young branches aren’t damaged — as these are more likely to flower at the start of the new crop. Once cherry has been picked, trees are tidied to remove any withered or weak branches, which helps determine which ones are ready to be pruned. The discarded plant material is also used to create mulch on the farm’s soil, a necessary addition that helps plants retain moisture during the dry season.
With the income generated from coffee, Victoria and Theobald have made improvements to their home, where they live with their three children. The eldest, Diane, is a university student who lends a hand during her holidays, while the younger siblings (a pair of twins) are finishing their secondary studies. Farming is a family affair, to Theobald’s delight, who shared with us in 2024 that he feels “really proud for my family because they are willing to join me in my activities. They are very good workers. We meet together in our purpose.” At the property, the family have planted crops like soghurm, yams, bananas and papaya, and raise rabbits alongside their cow. The crops held add mulch and shading to the farm, and the produce is either consumed or sold for profit at the local market.
When we asked Victoria if she had a message for the Australian community who enjoys her coffee, she told us, “As they really show love by liking and buying the coffee, we keep putting in effort to maintain the quality. We ask them to be our ambassadors, so that we can expand the market. If you have time to come and visit us, it really makes us strong – like we are not wasting our efforts.”
ABOUT RULI WASHING STATION
Ruli sits at 1,920 meters above sea level, overlooking a beautiful landscape of rolling green hills and rich, red earth. A total of 1756 farmers (1104 men, 652 women) deliver cherry to the washing station, which employs 36 permanent staff and increases by another 222 seasonal staff during the harvest period.
The area surrounding Ruli has mineral-rich soil and a lush environment that is well suited to specialty coffee production. Typically, farms are situated between 1,800 to 2,100 meters above sea level. Coffee is grown as a cash crop, alongside subsistence food crops like maize, beans and sorghum and some livestock like goats and chickens. Cows are also an important asset to a farming family. Besides having practical advantages – like providing milk and yoghurt to feed the family, producing excellent manure for the coffee farms, and being an opportunity for additional income – they are also a traditional symbol of wealth and status in Rwanda.
The washing station was established in 2003 and is the largest of Dukunde Kawa’s washing stations. It serves as the head office for the cooperative’s management team and the site also encompasses the cooperative’s dry mill and its dairy operations. The property is also the site of the Rambagirakawa community room and Dukunde Kawa’s cupping lab, nursery and model farm. Recently, the cooperative decided to expand their business by establishing a commercial roastery that supplies coffee to restaurants and hotels across town, with all activities carried at a building also located in Ruli.
Quality control operations at Ruli are overseen by Emerthe Mukamurigo, who has held this position since 2014, while the day to day is managed by Philomene Nyirabantu. Ruli is Rainforest Alliance certified, UTZ certified, and Fair Trade certified. These certifications help the growing cooperative find different markets for the coffee. “We were already doing a lot of the things that were required for these certifications”, Isaac (the executive secretary of the cooperative at the time) explained, “We are always trying to be the best cooperative we can be. Getting the certifications has helped highlight what we are doing well and helped us raise our standards in other areas.”
Head here to learn more about the work of Dukunde Kawa in Rwanda.
PROCESSING AT RULI WASHING STATION
The team at Dukunde Kawa takes a huge amount of care in processing its coffee. All members of the cooperative are trained to only select ripe coffee cherries from their trees.
- On delivery, the cherries are inspected and sorted by hand to ensure only the very ripest cherries are processed. Farmers do the selecting, and receive the highest income from the ripest, healthier fruit. The remainder of their crop still gets purchased by the co-op, at a lower price, to be processed and sold for the internal market.
- Cherry is then sorted by weight (and any floaters are removed) by a Pinhalense machine that the washing station staff affectionately have named the ‘Umupolisi’ (police person). By using a machine, rather than a clerk, Dukunde Kawa are more transparent with contributing growers about which fruit gets processed. Coffee is then pulped on the same day – usually in the evening – using a mechanical pulper that divides the beans into three grades by weight, with the heaviest, A1, usually having the highest cup quality.
- After pulping, the coffee is pre-washed and fermented overnight for around 12–18 hours and then graded again using floatation channels that sort the coffee by weight. The wet parchment is the washed a second time and left to ferment for a further six hours — with the goal of removing as much mucilage as possible without using machinery that may accidentally crush or damage the beans.
- As with most washing stations in Rwanda, women do the majority of hand-sorting. This takes place in two stages – on the covered pre-drying tables and on the drying tables. Washed beans are moved from the wet fermentation tanks onto the pre-drying tables, where they are intensively ‘wet sorted’ under shade for four hours. The idea is that greens (unripe beans) are still visible when the beans are damp, while the roofs over the tables protect the beans from the direct sunlight.
- Next, the beans are moved onto the washing station’s extensive raised drying tables (‘African beds’) for around two weeks, where they are sorted again for defects, turned regularly and protected from rain and the midday sun by covers, ensuring both even drying and the removal of any damaged or defective beans. During this period the coffee is also turned several times a day by hand to ensure the coffee dries evenly and consistently.
- After reaching 11-12% humidity, the coffee is then transported to Dukunde Kawa’s purpose-built warehouse prior to final dry-milling and hand sorting at the cooperative’s dry mill.
- Located in Ruli, Dukunde Kawa’s dry mill has the capacity to process one full container of coffee a day — and combines the use of technology with meticulous hand sorting to ensure only the best beans are bagged. Before being loaded for export, Rwanda’s National Agricultural Export Development Board also inspects and samples the prepped parchment.
WHY WE LOVE IT
This is the second time that we have purchased Victoria’s coffee, and we are excited to continue working with her in the future and as she grows her business further. This lot is intensely complex and juicy, with beautiful lifted florals.
