Reading time: 5 minutes
Last week we wrote about Kenya's effort to win back its place among the world's great coffee origins. This week we turn to a country that has spent the past two decades doing the opposite: steadily building a reputation from almost nothing.
There is a direct link between the two stories. Earlier this year, KT Press reported that Rwanda had overtaken Uganda to become Kenya's largest source of imported coffee. Kenyan buyers increasingly want traceable, specialty-grade coffee, and that is exactly what Rwanda has learned to produce.
This week, the country's finest lots of the year go before international buyers at auction. It is a good moment to explain why Rwandan coffee deserves a place in your kitchen.
A small country with a hard problem
Rwanda's coffee is grown by around 400,000 smallholders, most farming plots far smaller than a football pitch. Almost all of it is Arabica, and most of that is Bourbon, a variety prized for its sweetness and clarity in the cup.
The difficulty is geography. Rwanda has no coastline, so every bag has to travel hundreds of miles overland before it reaches a port. That makes exporting expensive. For a landlocked country, cheap bulk coffee barely pays its way. The only strategy that makes sense is to produce coffee good enough to justify the journey.
Built on washing stations
The turning point came in the years after 1994, as Rwanda rebuilt its rural economy. Coffee had long been grown in the country, but much of it was sold as low-grade bulk. From the early 2000s, development programmes helped farming cooperatives build washing stations and connect directly with specialty buyers abroad.
A washing station is where the quality is made. Farmers deliver freshly picked cherries the same day. The fruit is pulped, fermented, washed, and then dried slowly on raised beds, with the beans sorted by hand along the way. It is careful, labour-intensive work, and it produces the clean, bright cup that Rwanda is now known for. Today, around 80% of the country's coffee is fully washed.
A record year
The approach is paying off. Rwanda's coffee earned a record $148.6 million in the 2025/26 financial year, around 65% more than the year before.
Some of that is reaching farmers directly. In January, Rwanda's export board raised the minimum price paid for quality, ripe cherries by 25% for the 2026 season. After last week's story about Kenyan farmers waiting months to be paid, that is a meaningful contrast.
Then there is this week's auction. For its Best of Rwanda national competition, the export board selected 25 outstanding coffees from 320 samples. The winning lots are sold to specialty buyers worldwide at a live auction on Wednesday 21 October. Competitions like this matter because they put a price on quality, and show farmers that the extra care is worth it.
The challenge ahead
We would be painting an incomplete picture if we stopped there. Many of Rwanda's coffee trees are old. Around 39% are more than 30 years old, and the traditional Bourbon and Typica varieties, while excellent in the cup, are vulnerable to coffee leaf rust and coffee berry disease. A changing climate makes that harder.
The response is under way. World Coffee Research reported last month that five new varieties are entering Rwanda's formal commercial trials. They include the celebrated Geisha, alongside four others chosen for strong rust resistance and higher yields. New trees take several years to come into full production, so this is a long-term project. But it is the right one: protecting the quality Rwanda is known for while giving farmers trees that can cope with what is coming.
Our Rwanda Kigali
Our Rwanda Kigali is a good illustration of how Rwandan coffee works. It isn't a single-farm micro-lot. It is a fully washed coffee drawn from 40 washing stations and around 35,000 farmers, grown at 1,400 to 1,900 metres from Bourbon and Typica trees. Every bag represents the work of thousands of smallholders and the washing station network that made Rwanda's reputation.
The coffee is hulled, graded and hand-sorted at the Rwanda Trading Company in Kigali, the city whose name it carries. We roast it light to medium to keep its fruit to the fore. Expect a sweet, well-balanced and fruity cup with hints of cranberry. It shines as a pour-over or in a cafetière, where that brightness has room to come through.
When the auction results come in this week, the headlines will be about a handful of record-breaking lots. The bigger story is the hundreds of thousands of farmers behind everyday Rwandan coffee, and how far quality has carried them.
