It's uncommon in Rwanda for a woman to be a president and leader of a cooperative, but Daphrose Uwimana is an exceptional coffee farmer. Vunga is one of only a handful of cooperatives in Rwanda that are woman-owned and run, and that owns its own washing station. A coffee farmer since 1983, Daphrose is the driving force behind this exceptional coffee, and having founded the Vunga cooperative in 2009. This lot was collected from the 260 small holder farmer-members of the cooperative.

The Vunga cooperative and its tiny washing station are located near the borders of Uganda to the north and the Democratic Republic of Congo to the west, in the Northern Province of Rwanda.

Daphrose has created a close-knit community and mentors a group of women farmers that produces special women grown lots. She conducts seasonal training on best-in-class farming practices, such as applying fertilizers (90% of which are organic) and pruning older trees. She also trains farmers on financial literacy.

When Daphrose realized that the youth of the community weren’t interested in becoming coffee farmers (which is very common in coffee growing regions around the world), she invested the money she made from coffee to purchase land with the plan to teach youth in her community about farming, in the hopes to inspire them to enter the coffee sector and continue growing world-class specialty coffee.

We've loved getting to know Kenny Ntwali, founder of the importing company Higa Coffee. He's been a wealth of knowledge about this coffee in particular, and Burundian & Rwandan coffees in general. For example, we know that the coffee cherries were delivered to the Vunga washing station the first week of June 2024, and that the coffee was finished processing, drying and resting, and was ready for export on July 24th. Also, all we had to do was ask if he could provide us with the Farm Gate price (the amount of money the farmer gets paid out of what we pay the importer - see below for more info), and he came back with a detailed Transparency Report laying out not just what the farmers were paid, but the farmers' costs of production, and all of the other mill and transportation costs that add up to what we paid for the coffee.

Higa Coffee is committed to getting the farmer groups they work with high prices for quality coffees, and also aims for repeat buys: a large reason for volatility in coffee production is that roasters don't always commit to buying the coffee year over year - if the quality happens to dip a bit, they move on. This is counterintuitive to relationship-building and sustainable specialty coffee production. We are excited to be at the beginning of our relationship with Higa Coffee and Kenny, and look forward to many more delicious harvests.