In a small village in Rwanda lives Dative, a 58-year-old woman with a passion for coffee. Dative is a coffee farmer, she has always worked hard to support her five children and make sure they went to school. A few years ago, she got the opportunity to take out a loan to improve her coffee farm. And what a difference it has made!
From small farm to big success!
When Dative started growing coffee in 2008, she only had a few hundred coffee trees. But she was determined to grow. And she did. Bit by bit, she bought new land on which she planted new coffee trees. She now has 4,000 coffee trees, of which 2,500 are yielding. The remaining 1,500 are still young and will yield in the coming years.
There are few farmers in Rwanda who have a plantation of 1,500 coffee trees.
Banana trees provide shade on the coffee farm. They also bring additional income and are nutritious.
More investments in coffee
In 2024, Dative’s harvest is going well. She has been able to harvest a lot and currently the prices are high (this will unfortunately only be short-lived as it is a strategy of big coffee to take over the market, more on that in another article). She will invest the profit in a new irrigation system that collects rainwater and distributes it over her land. This way she will soon be able to water her plantation during dry periods. Due to climate change, there are increasingly frequent periods of heavy rain or prolonged drought.
Dative is a member of a cooperative
Koakambu is a coffee cooperative located not far from the city of Muhanga, where the headquarters of CPF Ineza is located. Pure Africa does not yet buy coffee from this cooperative, but we have already provided more than €35,000 in microcredits. The cooperative is stuck because they do not own their own coffee washing station. This forces them to sell their coffee to a multinational. And although they paid a good price in March, prices are already falling again.
Young coffee trees on Dative's farm. She expects to dratstically increase her harvest in the upcoming two years.
The loan has been paid back
Dative has just paid off her loan of RWF 1,500,000, about €1,050. Due to her increased harvest, she has now harvested 5,000 kg of coffee. There is still room for improvement because a coffee tree can yield about 5 kg per year and sometimes much more. Dative’s trees now yield 2 kg. With a next loan, it is important to increase the yield per tree.
New microloan has been planned
In addition to the irrigation system, Dative wants to invest further. There is a river not far from her land. She wants to buy a machine that can pump water from the river using solar energy. She will use the water to irrigate her plantation. Curious about the impact we are making with microcredits and fair prices for coffee farmers?
