The Story
"Kinini" means "this big thing right here" in Kinyarwanda, and the name fits. What started in 2014 as a community development project led by Jacquie Turner and Malcolm Clear, people who had already spent years building schools, pharmacies, and microfinance institutions in rural Rwanda, eventually became one of the country's most thoughtful and forward-looking coffee cooperatives. Rather than sourcing from established farms, Kinini leased unused land, distributed seedlings, and trained local farmers from the ground up. Today, 48 members across Kinini Village deliver their harvests to a central washing station, with 85% of those members being women. Premiums are reinvested into education, healthcare, and gender equity in the community.
Rwanda's specialty coffee story is worth knowing. In 2000, the government put coffee at the center of its agricultural recovery, and from virtually no specialty production at the start, more than half of national output was specialty-grade by 2018. It's a remarkable turnaround built on washing stations, cooperatives, and smallholder farmers doing meticulous work.
Kinini sits between 1,800 and 2,200 meters in the hills north of Kigali. Cherry is fully washed, fermented for 24 to 36 hours, and dried on raised beds under shade nets and rain tarps. We have been working with Crop to Cup to source this coffee since the community's first harvest. In our 7th season, this washed lot has the lime acidity and cola flavor we have come to expect year after year and there is a deep note of dried fig that brings the entire cup together.
