Rwanda exported 23,860 tonnes of coffee in 2025, earning nearly $150 million, according to figures cited by Arthur Karuletwa, Vice President of Sustainable Sourcing and Impact at Chobani and La Colombe, the Philadelphia-headquartered coffee roaster. Yet Karuletwa, a veteran of Rwanda's post-2000 specialty coffee pivot and a former strategic adviser to the Office of the President, argues that recognition alone does not translate into prosperity for the farmers whose labour underpins the industry.
Recognition is a door. It doesn't pay school fees by itself
he told AllAfrica on 28 October 2026.
What Happened
Karuletwa, who lost extended family members during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, describes developing a "personal vendetta" against coffee—not for its taste but for what it represented: a colonial relationship in which Rwandans were told to
grow coffee
protect the tree
leave the cup alone
while roasting, branding and retail margins were realised elsewhere, according to AllAfrica. His career has taken him from early consultancy work with OCIR-Café (now the National Agricultural Export Development Board) and the Ministry of Agriculture, through 12 years at Starbucks working on global coffee traceability, to his current role at La Colombe. He helped establish Inzozi Coffee Traders to train farmers and connect them to international markets, served on the founding team of Rwanda Trading Company as Vice President of Coffee Procurement to build dry-milling capacity, and in 2007 helped open Bourbon Coffee in Kigali, which he describes as Rwanda's first specialty coffee shop and retail roastery. Rwanda hosted the Cup of Excellence competition in 2008, becoming the first African country to do so, according to the report. The country moved from just two coffee washing stations in 2000 to more than 200 facilities within a few years, AllAfrica reports. Yet Karuletwa estimates that fewer than half of Rwanda's washing stations are owned by farmers, while the five largest exporters handle more than 80 per cent of exports.
Why It Matters
The washing station is
the first and most important point at which a farmer's work is assigned an economic value
Karuletwa told AllAfrica—the place where coffee cherries are weighed, graded and priced, determining the returns farmers receive. If the majority of those stations are not farmer-owned, and if five exporters control more than four-fifths of shipments, then the structural question is not whether Rwanda produces excellent coffee—it does—but who owns the value chain at each node between cherry and cup. The $150 million earned from 23,860 tonnes in 2025 was comparable to earnings from much smaller volumes in earlier years, reflecting growing unit value, according to Karuletwa's remarks. But without ownership of washing, milling, roasting and branding infrastructure, farmers risk remaining price-takers in a market where their labour creates the origin story that commands premiums abroad. For African policymakers across the continent, Rwanda's trajectory from 2 to 200-plus washing stations offers a template—but Karuletwa's analysis suggests infrastructure proliferation without ownership transfer is incomplete transformation.
Follow the Value
- Farmgate: Rwandan smallholders deliver cherries to washing stations, where their work is priced. Karuletwa estimates fewer than half of Rwanda's washing stations are owned by farmers, according to AllAfrica. - Washing and milling: The country built dry-milling capacity and expanded its washing-station network to more than 200 facilities. Yet the five largest exporters handle more than 80 per cent of exports, per Karuletwa's estimate. - Export: Rwanda shipped 23,860 tonnes in 2025, earning nearly $150 million, figures cited by Karuletwa to AllAfrica. - Roasting, branding, retail: These stages—where margins multiply—remain largely offshore. Karuletwa's 2007 effort to open Bourbon Coffee in Kigali was explicitly designed to demonstrate that local businesses could roast, serve and market to international standards, with a mission to
put a cup of Rwandan coffee in every Rwandan's hand
according to the report. - Risk: Farmers carry weather, pest and price risk. Private exporters and international roasters carry market and inventory risk but realise branding premiums and retail mark-ups that do not flow back to washing-station level.
The Questions That Need Answering
The Brew Brief View
Rwanda has done almost everything the development playbook prescribes: built washing infrastructure, hosted Cup of Excellence, trained farmers in quality, courted private investment. The result is $150 million from 23,860 tonnes—a respectable unit value by regional standards—but a value chain in which fewer than half the washing stations are farmer-owned and five exporters control more than 80 per cent of shipments. Recognition, as Karuletwa puts it, is a door. It does not pay school fees. What pays school fees is equity: in the washing station, the dry mill, the export company, the roastery, the brand.
The question is not whether Rwanda produces exceptional coffee. It does. The question is whether producing exceptional coffee is enough to build intergenerational wealth, or whether that requires owning the balance sheet. Karuletwa's career—from post-genocide reconstruction to Starbucks traceability systems to a senior role at La Colombe—proves African talent can lead global coffee supply chains. The scandal is that leading those chains from Philadelphia or Seattle remains more financially rational than leading them from Kigali. Because if traceability does not culminate in ownership, it is not transformation. It is just a more efficient way to extract.
