From 28th to 31st October 2019, on its 18th time, Rwanda is participating in the African Fine Coffee Conference and Exhibition.

The conference and exhibition features series of events organized by the African Fine Coffee Association (AFCA) every year since 2002 to gather coffee stakeholders from across the globe, especially Africa, to communicate stories behind their coffees, address challenges that hinder the sector and explore available opportunities to expand the coffee markets.

In February 2019 Rwanda hosted the major AFCA Conference and Exhibition. One of the resolutions taken from this event was to promote domestic consumption. It is against this point that this year, AFCA has convened its first African Specialty Coffee Expo in Zanzibar, Tanzania under the theme ‘Domestic consumption in Africa and AFCA barista retreat.’

It is an ideal platform for National Agricultural Export Development Board (NAEB) to take the national coffee brand to another level. Three coffee exporters and one official from NAEB have attended this event to exhibit the Rwandan Specialty Coffee.

This year’s theme accurately matches the need for Rwanda to promote the domestic coffee consumption. This is why, on its first time, the country through its partnership with JICA’s CUP Rwanda project has sent three professional baristas to pursue a series of trainings and competitions meant to improve their technical capabilities in making quality great-tasting coffee beverages that will ultimately increase local consumption of Rwandan coffee, hence growth of the sector.

It is expected that the Rwandan delegation will learn and seal deals with some of international stakeholders who include international importers, transporters and trade representatives.

Additionally, the event will be a chance for them to access information on different innovations and technologies the country’s sector to be more standardized with the entire global specialty markets.