Finding Solutions, Protecting Livelihoods in Rwanda: A Global Collaboration Case Study

Rwandan coffee is an important source of income and livelihood for over 500,000 small-scale rural farmers and a major source of foreign currency.  Improvements to coffee productivity and quality have a strong impact on poverty reduction for the nation. Traditionally, Rwanda produced low-quantity and low-quality coffee.  However, since 2002 the Rwandan government has targeted high quality specialty coffee that earns higher and more stable prices in international markets.  As a result, the fully washed specialty coffee increased from 1% of Rwanda’s total coffee exports in 2002 to 23% in 2010. Despite this significant increase in coffee production, pests and diseases—in particular coffee leaf rust, antestia bug, and coffee borer—reduce yields by up to 50%.  The antestia bug, in particular, is associated with potato taste, which disqualifies coffee from meeting the criteria established for “specialty grade”, thereby reducing farmers’ incomes.  The capacity of farmers to grade their own coffee at cooperative level was a result of the combined efforts of several development partners and a network of national and international universities, institutions, and private sector-coffee buyers.  During the 1994 genocide Rwanda lost a significant portion of its skilled human capital base and thus struggles even today to address science, technology and innovation challenges in critical sectors including agriculture, health, energy, and others.  With collaboration from the Global Knowledge Initiative (GKI), Rwandan researchers in entomology, crop science, agronomy, economics, and other fields are forming a multidisciplinary team of professionals to devise a solution to the antestia bug challenge.  Among the efforts this partnership is undertaking are the following:  (1) reframe the “potato taste coffee challenge” such that the complete diversity of technical specialists—from science and beyond—can be visualized and linked into a purpose-driven network focused on solutions, (2) establish the current status of coffee pests, (3) deepen understanding of the role of antestia bug in the potato taste problem for specialty coffee, and (4) develop integrated pest management strategies affordable to farmers and acceptable to buyers such that coffee productivity increases and the livelihoods of rural communities improve.