Phil in Rwanda: A week in Kigali

This week I've been in Kigali, doing work in the office for the most part.

The things I've worked on this week:

1. Read the entire project proposal which has been funded by the Bill G. foundation. Its over 200 pages. I did this just to familiarize myself with the project I'll be working on.

2. Created a few Excel spreadsheets and graphs showing project milestones for the next 5 years.

3. Created a template for Tanzania, Ethiopia and Kenya on the Agronomy Implementation Strategy. Rwanda is like the pilot program. Once we figure this thing out, we scale up and start the program (season-sensitive) in the other countries.

4. On Thursday I went with Supa, one of the Rwandan Business Advisors out to one of our cooperatives to check on their progress.

Before the recent funding, T-S had set up wet mills in about 10 different locations throughout Rwanda. A wet mill is a way of getting the coffee bean out of the berry. Using a wet mill (as opposed to drying in the sun) enables higher quality coffee beans. The new funding will enable T-S to build new wet mills as well as implement an Agronomy (science of crop production) education program.

It is important to note, however, that T-S does not contribute money towards the construction of the wet mills. This is good. This is sustainable. T-S finds farmer cooperatives throughout Rwanda who have potential - good coffee crops, adequate water supplies, correct elevation necessary for coffee to thrive, etc. If these cooperatives do not currently have a wet mill, T-S educates communities on the benefits of these mills. If the community decides to proceed with the wet mill construction, T-S hooks them up with local financing. I'm still trying to figure out who this is (bank, loan shark?) - but it works like a loan and I believe its normally about $10,000 paid over 3 years. Just like microfinance.

So, now the farmers have a wet mill and immediately they are able to get a higher yield from their existing crop. This eliminates expensive middle men, and the co-ops sell directly to international coffee companies like Starbucks. In fact, some of the coffee from one of the co-ops we work with last week made a deal with Peet's Coffee - who apparently has higher standards for coffee than Starbucks. After the implementation of this wet mill, this one cooperative saw an increase of 70% in profits from last year. Each co-op has approximately 200-300 members, so you can see how powerful this can be.

The next step, now that the farmers have seen how great the wet mill works - is agronomy training. So, now T-S teaches the farmers exactly the best way to grow coffee - to get the highest quality and quantity yield out of your land. Plus, a stipulation of the G grant is that everything must be grown environmentally sustainable. So, although we're teaching them to increase the burden on their land, its not directly environmentally harmful. Pretty sweet.