Idjwi Island - Women's Coffee Project | DR Congo

This offering comes from the women coffee producers of Idjwi Island who are members of the cooperative Rebuild Women's Hope (RWH). RWH was founded in 2013 by Marcelline Budza with the goals of fighting the inequalities that women in agriculture face and supporting the health and empowerment of women and girls. The coop helps women take charge of their lives through entrepreneurship and self-reliance. It's the group's mission “to give women back their voice by placing them at the center of all integral development, in particular, economic empowerment and autonomy. We believe that income controlled by women has a significant impact on the life of the family, including the development and well-being of the community.”

Women have faced significant challenges both in their communities and in the coffee industry in the DRC. There is a general culture of socio-economic discrimination against women, and they often were refused the right to income from coffee as it was considered a man's crop. Women were also denied access to land and land inheritance. In their communities, challenges include the underdevelopment of villages, lack of drinking water, lack of access to quality healthcare, and high illiteracy rates among women and the elderly.

The island of Idjwi is located in the middle of Lake Kivu along the border of Rwanda. Coffee has long been the island's main source of income, but producers there have consistently struggled to sell their coffee. The creation of cooperatives like RWH has completely changed the situation and opened the door to new opportunities for producers on Idjwi and the DRC, especially for women.

Washing Stations

RWH manages five washing stations: Hala, Boza, Chasi, Kalehe, and Kolwe. Chasi, Kalehe, and Kolwe are unique from Hala and Boza. This is due to the way the coffee is processed.

To pulp the coffee at Chasi, Kalehe, and Kolwe, they use a Mackinon machine, which doesn't remove the mucilage at all. Then they do two fermentations, which are dry fermentation and wet fermentation, to remove the mucilage. From there, the coffee is washed, graded, and sorted on the pre-drying bed. At the end of the day, the coffee is transported to the drying bed where it is dried for 21 days, respecting the volume of coffee on the drying bed, the stirring time, and the humidity. At Boza and Hala, they use the Penagos machine, which removes 80 percent of the mucilage, and they only carry out wet fermentation to remove the remaining 20 percent of mucilage.

The soil structure at Chasi, Kalehe, and Kolwe differs from that at Boza and Hala, and these sites have young coffee plantlets that have been regenerated over the last three years.