The “Coffee Doctors”: The Language of Taste and the Rise of Rwanda's Specialty Bean Value

Abstract

The emergence of Rwanda's specialty coffee sector during the early twenty-first century has brought high-end Rwandan coffee to the shelves of coffee retailers across the United States, Europe, and Japan. While a variety of factors have influenced the rapid development of Rwanda's specialty coffee industry, one of the most significant has been the training of domestic coffee tasters. Known as cuppers, these taste professionals act as a unique link in this global foodway and help enable perception of locally based flavors through marketplace mechanisms. The Rwandan cupper is not simply another middleman in a very long commodity chain. Rather, she or he plays a new role in transforming a generic cash-crop commodity into locality-based luxury item. This new role highlights the language and standards used to differentiate coffees in producing countries for international niche markets.

Notes

1. See Alex Renton, “Jack Sprat: Fair trade food—it just tastes better” The Times, February 13, 2009, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/article5718241.ece. For contrasting opinions, see Rwanda Blue Bourbon at http://urbansemiotic.com/2006/03/30/starbucks-whole-bean-coffee-review/

2. The author has no financial or contractual affiliation with the organizations and companies contacted during this research. Funding for this project was provided by the University of California, Los Angeles graduate student support. Generous thanks to the many coffee experts who offered their time and thoughts towards this project, both in the United States and in Rwanda.

3. Though Kagame won both the 2003 and 2010 elections with over 90% of the national vote, many domestic and international critics doubt the extent to which these elections were actually democratic as his government prevented many opponents from running. Also see Human Rights Watch at http://www.hrw.org/africa/rwanda for more criticism of Kagame's regime.

4. See the William J. Clinton Foundation at http://www.clintonfoundation.org/what-we-do/clinton-hunter-development-initiative/i/success-story-rwandan-farmers-coffee and the Gates Foundation at http://www.gatesfoundation.org/learning/Pages/progress-report-technoserve-business-training-coffee-farmers-africa.aspx for more on business development funding in the Rwandan coffee industry.

5. M. Allison, “Starbucks to Open Center for Coffee Farmers in Rwanda,” The Seattle Times, Business and Technology, 4 December 2007.

6. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), such as Technoserve, as well as USAID, have been instrumental in making these recommendations. Many NGOs working to revitalize Rwanda's coffee industry receive funding from large donor institutions, such as the Gates Foundation.

7. National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda, http://statistics.gov.rw

8. http://rwandacafe.com/index

9. See article at http://www.busiweek.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=903&Itemid=1

10. 9 Food and Agriculture Indicators, Rwanda (2006). United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Retrieved 24 January 2009 from http://www.fao.org

11. http://www.fao.org

12. Prices Paid to Growers in Current Terms, U.S. cents per lb. (2004–2007). International Coffee Organization. Retrieved 8 December 2008 from http://www.ico.org/asp/display7.asp

13. This figure might be higher than actual, taking into account profit generated by retailers though mixing with milk for espresso drinks (Daviron and Ponte 2005).

14. At the beginning of the 21st century, coffee was the second-most-valuable traded commodity on international markets, following oil (Pendergrast 1999).

15. For more on fair trade price premiums, see http://www.transfairusa.org/content/resources/faq-advanced.php#minimum

16. Personal interview with multiple industry personnel. Kigali, Rwanda, 2008.

17. For a broader discussion of quality as evaluated by consumers, see Daviron and Ponte (2005), Renard (2005). Given the scope of this article, quality will be referred to as it pertains to producing countries.

18. Within these designations, A-quality beans are the most uniform in size and shape while C-quality are visibly misshapen and of varying sizes (Daviron and Ponte 2005)

19. The SPREAD Annual Report Draft (2007). Kigali, United States Agency for International Development: 1–33. Retrieved 8 May 2008 from http://www.spreadproject.org. In 2008, there were 120 washing stations in Rwanda.

20. Bikes to Rwanda is one nonprofit organization working to lease bicycles to coffee farmers.

21. For countries with a drier climate, dry-processed coffee is generally considered to be a better production method; for countries such as Rwanda with an abundant water supply and a wetter climate, washing the coffee is a crucial step in producing a higher-quality coffee bean.

22. The extent to which this type of processing is practiced or considered necessary varies by country, but in Rwanda, all coffee that will be sold on the specialty market must be fully washed.

23. Funding to train the cuppers between 2006 and 2011 has been provided by the SPREAD project under the guidance of Texas A&M University; between 2002 and 2005 funding was provided by a similar project, Partnerships to Enhance Agriculture in Rwanda through Linkages (PEARL), sponsored by Michigan State University.

24. All personal names have been changed to protect confidentiality.

25. The fact that a person living in Rwanda today was born in a neighboring country and returned with their family after the civil war often indicates that their parents had fled the country during the first waves of Tutsi expulsion in the 1960s.

26. See http://www.coffeeinstitute.org/ for information on specific guidelines the Specialty Coffee Association of America uses to determine quality within the coffee industry.

27. There are a few different scoring rubrics; this description corresponds to the one used in preparation for the Cup of Excellence competition.

28. See also Fair Trade guidelines at http://www.transfairusa.org