Baho Coffee in Rwanda
The sole provider of African coffee on the P.S. Menu, Baho Coffee’s impact and commitment to Rwandese specialty coffee is paradigm shifting.
Founded by Emmanuel Rusatira and his family after nearly 20 years of working in washing stations, Emmanuel established Baho Coffee to freely focus his energy on implementing his own philosophies and pushing high-quality protocols with multiple washing stations across the country.
Processing the coffee to parchment for export at the Baho Coffee washing stations.
Coffee production in Rwanda works very similarly to most other African countries. Because the average farm size, and therefore volumes, are extremely low, thousands of smallholder farmers deliver cherry to centralized washing processing stations rather than developing their own costly wet and dry mills.
Baho works with diverse groups of small producers who deliver coffee cherries to their washing stations for prices far above the national mandated price. They then undertake the work of processing these coffees to parchment for export.
"Baho’s vision on community is guided by having a synergetic relationship with the community of farmers that we work with, where we guide them and create solutions in a replicable, sustainable and scalable manner leading to economic growth and poverty reduction." — Emmanuel Rusatira
Emmanuel is one of only a small select group of Rwandese people running coffee export businesses. This means that profits remain in the country and are reinvested back into the people who make the local coffee sector possible rather than sailing away from its shores in each container that is shipped. His commitment to his employees and the farmers who he buys cherry from is deep, because unlike multinational companies, he is invested in the future of his own country. In the last year alone, Baho has provided smallholders in overlooked regions with millions of coffee seedlings, an action that could increase the overall production in the country by up to 10%.
Shop Coffee by Baho
Working with Baho Coffee means being part of the creation of a new future.
In conjunction with Semilla, they've engaged in the difficult task of providing in-depth traceability to the producer level, allowing for year over year relationships that redefine coffee production for smallholders in the Baho network. Across East Africa - and we would argue the specialty coffee industry as a whole - Baho is setting new standards for us all.