“‘Buying coffee in Congo is not only quality business but also an act of solidarity’

Rewarding quality

The answer to that question was simple: farmers need to learn how the quality of their product is rewarded by consumers with a better price, and so they needed to become skilled in how quality coffee is produced. At that time, however, there was only one price for coffee in Congo, because all Congo coffee was downright bad. Even those who would have made quality efforts would not have been able to find a buyer for it then, they would have got the same low price as those who left their coffee to dry in the dust on the street side. And so it is not surprising that quality was totally neglected.

The challenge for VECO (now Rikolto) was to create a new market mechanism that did reward quality and then find the right commercial partners for it who would help ensure its sustainability. In this way, farmers could experience in practice how this new market worked, adopt its logic and solidify its partnerships on the longer term, while Rikolto could start preparing its gradual withdrawal as a support actor.

Cooperative societies became the hubs of that mechanism. By pooling their scarce resources, coffee farmers became shareholders and thus co-owners of their cooperatives, and Rikolto offered a leverage mechanism that doubled their commitment, to move forward faster. With that money, they built their own micro-washing stations where coffee berries were mechanically pulped and then, using simple but effective methods, fermented, washed, dried and shipped. And the results were as expected! Kawa Kabuyabecame the first coffee coop to win the national quality competition of AFCA, the African Fine Coffees Association, in Congo. Six cooperatives with an average of 2,500 members each saw the light of day within the Rikolto programme. A new coffee era began.

Top five

Ten years later, Kawa Kabuya makes history again: in March 2025, Congo enters the top five best coffees in Africa for the first time ever in the AFCA regional competition Taste of Harvest. The laureate list has traditionally been dominated by Ethiopia, the cradle of arabica coffee. Kawa Kabuya ranks fourth there this year with a score of 88.25 points, barely a quarter point away from the big winner. A real breakthrough for Congolese coffee.

It sounds like a fantastic step forward and a boon for the cooperative's sales figures, but is it really? Unfortunately, in Congo, nothing is ever simple and straightforward. Shakes Sivasingana, director of Kawa Kabuya, lists the problems.

Of the 50 or so micro-washing stations the cooperative has built over the years, only half are active today. The reason is that the M23 rebels have captured much of North Kivu, and in the occupied areas it is now impossible to maintain regular contact with the micro-washing stations. It has thus become difficult to monitor coffee and prevent it from being smuggled into Uganda.

People who leave the rebel region and move north to the areas that are still controlled by the Congolese army are systematically detained on suspicion of collaborating with the rebels, whether you are a journalist, a taximan or a member of a coffee cooperative. Everyone is treated as a collaborator with the enemy.

Despite everything, last week Kawa Kabuya still found a way to extract three truckloads of coffee from micro-washing stations out of the rebel-held area and send them towards Butembo, but the intelligence agency ANR intercepted them. They were released only after paying a totally illegal levy of $500 per truck. Imagine, in this country you are fined when you rescue coffee from the illegal circuit and return it to the official market. It's like being punished for being a good citizen.

The trouble caused by the rebels is not enough, the government departments add to it for their self-enrichment, at the expense of the farmers. But if that can save 27 tons of parchment coffee from confiscation by the rebels or theft by smugglers, then of course, as a cooperative, you don't hesitate, in the interest of your members, no matter how unjust those fines are.

The added value of a cooperative business

Good news is that four micro-washing stations, located in another region where ADF/MTM rebels had been terrorising the population for some time, have become operational again, now that those Muslim rebels have moved west when they heard that the Ugandan army was coming into Congo to fight them. Kawa Kabuya and Rikolto, with the support of IFAD (International Fund for Agricultural Development), were able to quickly provide them with new coffee pulping machines so that their members can once again participate fully in the cooperative's success and enjoy the highest price (20% higher than what non-members are paid by local coffee buyers). Before that, the cooperative had also done a much-appreciated collection of clothes and kitchen utensils for all members whose houses had been set on fire by the rebels.

A negative trend however is that renewing certifications has become very difficult. Fairtrade has already withdrawn from eastern Congo in 2022 because they do not want to put their inspectors at risk. Temporary certification with remote verification was tested but abandoned, with no alternative. Two years later, Ecocert and Africert also discontinued organic certification in the region for the same reason. For a coffee cooperative, however, dual certification Fairtrade/bio is vital.

Fairtrade now says they are nevertheless trying to develop again a new appropriate standard for conflict areas by 2026 at the latest, with more consideration for local support. Until then, new certifications remain impossible. Negotiations with CERES in Kenya have recently begun. This company has shown interest to take over biocertification in Congo. Hopefully they will keep their word. Because bio-certification is now linked to new European Union regulations (EUDR), requiring hard evidence that coffee (and other imports) come from regions where no deforestation has taken place after 2020. Therefore, all coffee fields must be geolocated with GPS.

Kawa Kabuya has already made good progress: 1,800 fields are already on the map, the remaining 700 are still inaccessible because of occupation by the M23 rebels. Without their cooperative, all small farmers would lose their access to the European market. Now they are well informed and getting ready to meet all conditions in time to continue exporting coffee to the European Union after 2025.

Partners you can count on

Access to credit, a super-important condition for buying coffee from members, suffers from the lenders’ heightened risk perception. Incofin, for instance, pulled out of eastern Congo altogether after a number of loans were not repaid. Much to Shakes' regret, as Kawa Kabuya had indeed repaid its loan to Incofin in full, yet is now also losing this financial oxygen bubble when it is needed most.

And then there is the problem of the kind of buyers who, due to lack of liquidity, condition payments to the cooperative by reselling first the coffee to their end customers. This can easily take several months. In such case, the cooperative is forced to delay repayment of the loan, needlessly prolonging the period used as a basis for calculating the ever-increasing interest, triggering penalties for tardiness and further eroding its profit margin.

‘Rikolto should continue to help us,’ urges Shakes, ‘to find more diverse buyers to spread our risks, but also to acquire assurances that payment does happen immediately after export, so as not to drive the cooperative into a debt morass and interrupt the flow of our exports. We would also like Rikolto to re-engage Kawa Kabuya's former top partners. Colruyt, Coffee Circle and Or Coffee for example, today we miss the kind of solid long-term partners that they used to be for us.'

Accelerated ageing

'We admit it, we have experienced unexpected quality problems in recent years. Accelerated ageing of coffee between harvesting and export is the name of the phenomenon we had never seen before in the whole region. The coffee sample we sent was deemed good by the buyer, upon which he gave the go-ahead to export the entire container, but upon arrival two months later, that coffee was then suddenly found to have become downright bad during the journey and unmarketable. Which led to huge losses.'

'Rikolto helped us investigate what had gone wrong. We had to adopt a new concept: water activity, and also a new device to measure that water activity. Two coffees with the same water content, but one with high water activity and the other with low water activity, will behave very differently. That first one will age very quickly and lose all its flavours, while the other will stay good for up to two years.'

'Now we know this, and we have also adapted our drying techniques to ensure that moisture content and water activity are both OK from now on: avoid drying fast, because then water is trapped by hardening of the outer layer of the coffee bean, but also slow drying, because then bacteria still have time to develop and ruin your coffee. We are now controlling drying much better and quality problems of the past are completely gone. I therefore hope we will now win back our former buyers.'

Farming becomes our profession

'The more buyers we have, the more farmers we can help move into a professional coffee chain that rewards quality efforts. And with Rikolto's support, we are now also focusing on diversifying our members' crops, so that food crops are also grown in between and around the coffee plants, for home consumption and local sales. In this way, young people understand that farming is indeed an honourable and viable profession and they start seeing a future again. And we contribute to improved food security.'

Don't leave us alone

'For the first time in years, we are seeing a change in the attitude of the international community. The indifference of the past 30 years to the tragedy in eastern Congo is gradually giving way to growing involvement and increasing pressure on the armed groups, on the neighbouring countries that support them, on the government in Kinshasa that has to take responsibility, on the companies that thrive on resource theft. How wonderful that would be should lasting peace finally be possible.'

'Despite all the difficulties, Kawa Kabuya has been able to become the reference for coffee cooperatives in the region, with the best price paid to farmers, the best quality offered to buyers and with genuine transparent democratic governance. How much better off would we be if our fields and roads became safe, army and police protect us instead of living on our backs, and more and more people around the world drink our fine coffee?'