Description
CONGO KATANDA
This coffee is coming from a beautiful area with perfect climate conditions for growing coffee in the northern part of Congo called Kivu. Katanda is the name of a cooperative where 34 farmers from the area are bringing their harvests for further processing. We can tell you that buying coffee in this region truly makes a big difference to the people as coffee is one of their main incomes. Most of the farmers have a very small production.
In former years there was hardly no specialty coffee, the farmers produced some high quality coffees but then everything was blended with the rest due to the lack of buyers who were willing to pay higher prices
Now there are micro washing stations situated on high altitude with the potential of producing great coffee. Most of them recently started or got recently united in a cooperative.
Our partners from Cup A Lot that were in the region several times already and discovered this great coffee for us are supporting the local community in education and means of production.
Until recently almost all coffee out of this region was illegally crossing the border and sold as Ugandan coffee. The main reasons for this were the insecure situation in the Kivu – Ituri region and the very high taxes the Congolese government is raising on green coffee compared to much lower taxes in Uganda. This together with the low prices they receive didn’t leave them any choice but selling to local buyers in Uganda. Now it’s slowly changing and good quality is awarded with higher income.
