Origin guideEast Africa
Rwanda Rwandan speciality coffee
Rwanda is one of Africa’s smallest coffee producers and one of its most exciting. Its coffee grows on steep, high hills, almost all of it on smallholder farms, and the best lots are sweet, bright and full of red fruit and citrus.
The field notes
Rwanda at a glance
- Harvest
February – July
- Production
About 23,900 tonnes of green coffee exported in 2025, roughly 400,000 60 kg bags
- Main regions
Western: Lake Kivu (Rutsiro, Karongi, Nyamasheke, Rusizi)
Southern: Huye, Nyamagabe, Nyaruguru
Northern: Rulindo, Gakenke
Eastern
- Common varietals
Red Bourbon · Jackson · Mibirizi · Pop 3303
Production figure: green coffee exports for 2025, reported by Rwanda’s National Agricultural Export Development Board (NAEB). Rwanda is not covered by the USDA estimates used on our other guides.
When is it harvested, and how is it processed? See our guide to coffee harvesting and processing.
Chapter 01The story
History of coffee in Rwanda
German missionaries brought coffee to Rwanda at the end of the 1800s, and the first trees were planted in 1904 in Gashonga, near Lake Kivu in the south-west. Coffee spread across the country in the 1930s, when the Belgian colonial government made growing it compulsory for many farmers.
For most of the 20th century, quantity mattered more than quality. Coffee was Rwanda’s only cash crop until tea arrived in 1952, and in the 1970s and 1980s it earned between 60% and 80% of the country’s export revenue. Nearly all of it was sold as ordinary, semi-washed coffee through a single exporter.
Chapter 02Rebuilding
From commodity to speciality
The 1994 genocide against the Tutsi devastated Rwanda, and its coffee sector with it. That year the country had just one coffee washing station, and as late as 2001 some farmers were pulling up their trees because they couldn’t sell their coffee.
Rwanda chose to rebuild around quality. Private washing stations began opening in 2001, so farmers could deliver ripe cherry to be fully washed and carefully dried instead of processing it at home. The better coffee earned better prices, and the number of stations grew quickly, to more than 300 today.
In 2008 Rwanda hosted Africa’s first Cup of Excellence, the competition that finds and auctions a country’s best lots. It put Rwandan coffee firmly on the speciality map.
Chapter 03Today
Coffee in Rwanda today
Rwanda’s coffee is grown by hundreds of thousands of smallholder farmers, farming steep hillsides, often alongside beans, sweet potatoes and other food crops. They sell their cherry to a nearby washing station, where it is sorted, fermented, washed and dried slowly on raised beds. Most of the coffee is Bourbon, which gives Rwandan coffees their sweetness and bright, juicy fruit.
2025 was a record year. Rwanda exported 23,860 tonnes of green coffee and earned more than US$148 million, at an average of US$6.20 per kilo.
Our 2026 Christmas Coffee comes from the Cooperative Coffee Rusiga Sector in Rulindo, in the high hills of the north. The cooperative was founded by women producers and is organised into twelve village groups. In the cup it tastes of orange, peach and tea rose, and for every bag sold we donate £1 to The Salvation Army’s Christmas Appeal.
Taste the neighbours
Like Rwandan coffee? Try its neighbours
We're not roasting a coffee from Rwanda right now. Coffees from Kenya and Ethiopia are close cousins in the cup, so start here.
