September 2024 Discovery Coffee

BURUNDI | Masenga Hill Lot #1

BRIGHT, BLACKCURRANT, APRICOT

REGION | Masenga Hill, Bujumbura

PROCESS | Fully Washed

SPECIES | Arabica 

VARIETY | Red Bourbon

ALTITUDE | 1700-1900 MASL

ABOUT MASENGA HILL

This lot is grown by Thomas Kurumbone, Leonie Ndayishimiya, and Philip Ntagahoraho. Masenga Hill is located a little south of the capital of Burundi, Bujumbura - a city of around 375,000 on the northern shore of Lake Tanganyika. Its tropical savanna climate, with a moderate monsoon season and very dry summers, often creates drought conditions making farming very challenging.

This coffee is imported by the Migoti Coffee Company. The name ‘Migoti’ comes from a local indigenous tree, which is also the name of the mountain where Migoti built their first coffee washing station.

In 2016 Migoti Coffee Company built a coffee washing station at Migoti Mountain, partnering with industry experts who provided technical expertise. Coffee trees are owned by the community, and Migoti purchases the coffee cherries directly from the farmers who harvest and deliver the cherries to our station. Over 300 tons of green coffee was produced and exported from Migoti Mountain in the 2017, 2018 and 2019 coffee seasons. These harvests have received excellent cupping scores, frequently placing it as some of the best speciality coffee coming from Burundi.

The washing station is operated by a local team of ten permanent staff and over 250 temporary workers who are employed during the coffee season from March to June.

The station manager, Zephyrin Banzubaze, is responsible for managing all of the staff to train coffee farmers, receive and select coffee cherries, process the coffee, oversee the coffee drying process, store and mill the dry parchment coffee and prepare the final green coffee for export. The majority of the temporary staff are women, who work mainly on the raised drying tables, regularly turning the coffee as it dries and removing defective beans that compromise the coffee quality. Migoti also assists farmers through ongoing education to prune and properly care for coffee trees, intercrop, plant shade trees, utilise green fertilisers, stabilise soils and natural pest control. The expectation is that by following best farming practices the farmers can increase the yields from their coffee trees by five- to ten-fold.

HISTORY OF COFFEE IN BURUNDI

Coffee production has been something of a roller coaster in Burundi, with wild ups and downs: During the country’s time as a Belgian colony, coffee was a cash crop, with exports mainly going back to Europe or to feed the demand for coffee by Europeans in other colonies.

Under Belgian rule, Burundian farmers were forced to grow a certain number of coffee trees each—of course receiving very little money or recognition for the work. Once the country gained its independence in the 1960s, the coffee sector (among others) was privatised, stripping control from the government except when necessary for research or price stabilisation and intervention. Coffee farming had left a bad taste, however, and fell out of favour; quality declined, and coffee plants were torn up or abandoned.

After the civil war–torn 1990s and the nearly total devastation of the country’s economy, coffee slowly emerged as a possible means to recover the agrarian sector and increase foreign exchange. In the first decade of the 2000s, inspired in large part by neighbouring Rwanda’s success rebuilding through coffee, Burundi’s coffee industry saw an increase in investment, and a somewhat healthy balance of both privately and state-run coffee companies and facilities has created more opportunity and stability, and has helped Burundi establish itself as an emerging African coffee-growing country, despite its small size and tumultuous history.