Mukwinja

This lot comes from the Mukwinja washing station in South Kivu, one of 8 such stations opened by Virunga Coffee Company in 2012 to produce specialty coffees in eastern DRC and improve the livelihoods for smallholder farmers in the region. Mukwinja works with 699 farmers in South Kivu, who cultivate at altitudes between 1,500 and 2,500 meters. Despite the high potential of the coffees around Mukwinja, smallholder production is characterized by a very small farm size, lack of infrastructure for coffee processing and lack of access to high-quality markets. Virunga Coffee is working to improve this by offering technical assistance to coffee farmers on regenerative agriculture practices, as well as access to coffee inputs, namely high-quality coffee seedlings to increase farming productivity, and thus profitability.