Kawa Kanzururu

‘Kanzururu’ is derived from the native Kinande language and means ‘What is good, beautiful, and as white as snow.’ In the local language Kawa Kanzururu means white coffee, and also symbolises the snow on Mount Ruwenzori, where the farms of its members are located. The Kawa Kanzururu cooperative, also known as COOKKANZ, was created in 2014 to revitalise the coffee sector in the Beni territories. Coffee production had been abandoned due to successive wars since 1996. In partnership with VECO-RDCongo, LOFEPACO, APADER, and the coffee producers of Beni, the cooperative was set up. Its membership has grown from 423 farmers in 2014 to 2121 in 2023.

COOKKANZ currently has 27 micro-washing stations. These are linked to the farms by roads that are unfortunately impassable and force producers to transport coffee on their backs.

Kawa Kunzururu produces fully washed Kivu 3 and farmer processed Kivu 5 arabica coffees. The cooperative implements various actions to improve the conditions of the producers, to produce higher quality coffee, to obtain better prices and to strengthen the sustainability of the coffee sector. These actions include: facilitating access to seeds of good varieties and quality agricultural inputs; organising members into sections corresponding to the micro-washing stations; strengthening the organisational and technical capacities of the micro-washing stations and producers; coaching members to help them obtain certifications; collecting and managing parchment coffee; packaging coffee for the market; marketing to buyers offering better prices; participating in actions to improve the governance of the coffee sector; promoting coffee locally and internationally, by providing better information on the coffee sector.

The Kawa Kanzururu cooperative has overcome several challenges through a partnership established in 2018 with the Virunga Foundation/Farm Africa. This partnership has solved problems related to marketing, quality improvement in the micro-washing stations, lack of working capital, and has led to positive results, such as contracts with international buyers, increased coffee volume, credit solutions, obtaining organic and Fairtrade certificates and improved equipment and infrastructure.

Despite these advances, the cooperative faces certain constraints, including insecurity in the production area, the remoteness of the unpacking plants, high taxes in the DRC, and fraud at the Congolese-Ugandan border. For the future, the cooperative aims to increase the number of containers exported each year, to build a dry mill in the area, to advocate for the development of roads linking the micro-washing stations to the collection depots, and to strengthen marketing.