Founded in 2004 in Musasa, at an altitude of over 2,000 metres, it brings together over 1,100 farmers. The cooperative is located just 50 km north of Kigali as the crow flies, but after more than 2 hours on winding tracks.
At this cooperative, the water used to wash the coffee is reused. The cooperative encourages farmers to reforest their plots and plant shade trees. When a farmer leaves the cooperative with a coffee plant, he also gets a shade tree.
The cooperative has also set up a system of financial aid with the creation of a “Farmers saving account”: the possibility of taking out a small low-interest loan with the cooperative.
Dunkunde Kawa is also behind the “Musasa Milk” project, which helps to diversify farmers’ income by giving them a cow. The cow is used to fertilise the fields, but also to sell milk to the cooperative, which processes it into yoghurts and other dairy products for the local market.
