NKORA COFFEE WASHING STATION

Nkora washing station is the biggest washing station in Rwanda with the capacity of 500 metric Tons located at 30KM from Gisenyi in Kigeyo sector of Rutsiro district and is owned by CAFERWA (Cafe du Rwanda in French or Coffee of Rwanda in English) which is a Coffee exporting company started in 1995 with the main objective of exporting coffee to different points of the world. In the year 1998 it stops its operations due to the coffee crisis all over the world and it is in the year 2003 that it comes again in coffee export but with different objectives of improving the coffee of the highest quality.
It is that regards that the company bought the biggest coffee washing station located in the western province in Nkora with a capacity of producing 500 tons of parchment coffee per season.

       CAFERWA also own other three washing station which has a capacity of 200 Metric Tons of which two are found at the shores of Lake Kivu and another one at the high altitude of rural Kigali. CAFERWA works with 750 small scale coffee farmers who are grouped in cooperatives, in Nkora CAFERWA is working with COCANKO (Cooperative de Cafe de Nkora) which is made up of 384 members of which 116 are women and 268 men and are all situated at Mushyonyi and Kigeyo sectors of Rutsiro district, they grows specialty coffee in the volcanic soils at the shores of Lake Kivu within an altitude of 1450-1800 m and the average rainfall of 1250mm. This coffee is of the great characteristics because of the volcanic soils, clean acidity, full body flavour, and chocolate and fruit aroma.  COCANKO was started in 2007 and was legally acknowledged in the same year. Members of this cooperative have in total 33780 coffee trees, the ones with less trees have between 100-150 coffee trees and earn between 150000 Rwf-200000RWF per year where as the ones with the biggest number of trees have between 1000-1500 trees of coffee and earn between 700000RWF-900000 RWF per year.

     Inyamanza Travels takes you to this beautiful place to learn about coffee from how it is planted to when you can drink it. After the explanations from both the farmer and the washing station attendant you will get to see how coffee is traditionally roasted and grinded and a moment of sharing a cup of coffee with the farmers.