Coffee Board of Burundi

Foodstuff & Beverages

Burundi

The first arabica coffee tree in Burundi was introduced by the Belgians in the early 1930s and has been growing in the country ever since. Coffee cultivation is an entirely small holder based activity with over 800.000 families directly involved in coffee farming with a total acreage of 60.000 hectares in the whole country with about 25 millions of coffee tree. Burundi coffee falls into mild arabica category grown in the world and it is known as among the best ones grown in the Eastern Africa region because its quality is inherent to the hills and mountains where is cultivated at altitudes ranging from 1250 and 2000 meters above sea level. Another thing to note is that each farmer is tendering about 50 to 250 trees Burundi coffee is of the arabica species though some robusta producrion also exists. Of the total production, arabica coffee represents 96 % , the reminder is robusta.

The most successful variety grown to date is Bourbon and constitutes the majority on nearly all farms. FARMING SYSTEM: Mixed farming ( coffee trees are intercropped with subsitence crops such as bananas, beans, etc) throughout the country. Generally, flowering takes place in September which is usually considered as the the start of rainfall after summer period. Harvest runs from February to July with a pin production in may to June When being harvested , delicate hands pick only the ripe red cherries for selection. PROCESSING: Two methods are used . These are wet processing for fully washed and dry for semi washed coffee Wet method is operating with ecological technology that requires a minimum fermentation process thus leaving natural coffee attributes intact.

More 138 coffee washing stations are scattered in the whole country. Then , coffee is thoroughly rinsed to remove the mucus and dried out under the sun Semi method is using manual hand pulpers or traditional methods at home for those pulpers are not available Coffee produced for both methods is called parchment. When the latter reaches the required moisture content, it is transported to mills for additional process such as hulling, bean selection by size, weight and density separation and finally lab technicians come along for quality control and classification into grades . This step is very important and must be carried out by well trained liquorors of the Regulatory body (OCIBU) before sales. QUALITY CONTROL; OCIBU has two main laboratories.

One is located in Bujumbura and the other in Gitega, the second city of the country with differents chains based in the state and private venture mills and in private mills Each lab has the main role of supervising and controlling coffee quality from harvesting, processing, transportation, roasting, and delivery up to buyers. INNOVATIONS: Since 2000, milling processs is carefully carried out by specifying coffee terroirs and separation of grades while formerly, milling was using bulk in blends.Since the practice of that specific milling stated above, Burundi has gained a good reputation of being capable of producing a best arabica coffee that can compete with other mild arabica in the world. Direct sale is another innovation introduced to speed up the sales and make available coffee to clients EXPORT Main destinations of Burundi coffee are Belgium, Germany, Holland, Suitzerland, Australia, Japan, and the united States.

Coffee is shipped by vessel from the port of Bujumbura, capital city of Burundi to the port of Kigoma in Tanzania from where it is loaded onto rail wagons and hauled to the Indian Ocean port of Dar es Salaam