Part I of this series described Rwanda’s burgeoning cooperative movement and its thriving coffee industry, which have combined to alleviate crippling poverty and ethnic tensions in this country. Part II of this series places the current success of Rwanda’s coffee industry in a broader historical context and explains why export oriented development might not be such a good thing after all.

Part II
Coffee was introduced to what is now present day Rwanda by Belgium colonialists, who, in 1933, made it compulsory for Rwandan’s to grow coffee on at least a quarter of their land. Even today, more than forty years after independence, coffee has the foul aftertaste of colonialism here and many Rwanda’s refuse to drink it, opting instead for tea. But for highbrow American connoisseurs, Rwandan coffee is a delicacy. Premium coffee roasters, with snooty names like Intelligentsia, are coming to Rwanda in droves and paying upwards of $3.50 a pound for high quality beans. And with entire armies of coffee-sipping yuppies taking over neighborhood cafes in the United States, Rwanda’s coffee bean growers, who now produce some of the world’s highest quality beans, are finally seeing this vestige of colonialism pay off.