KIGALI, Rwanda — During his third visit to Rwanda, Starbucks Coffee Co. chairman, president and CEO Howard Schultz met with Rwanda's President Paul Kagame to discuss and build on the investments Starbucks has made in East Africa over the past five years as well as future opportunities. Additionally, Schultz will participate in the upcoming grand opening of the Starbucks Farmer Support Center in Kigali.
The Rwandan Farmer Support Center (FSC) will work with East African coffee communities to improve coffee quality and growing practices. The team will work in the region to increase the number of farmers supplying Starbucks Shared Planet coffee, which is produced according to Starbucks responsibly grown, ethically traded coffee buying guidelines. Since the opening of the company's Costa Rican FSC, Starbucks has seen improvements in quality evaluation scores, as much as 20 percent increase in yields per hectare, up to an 80 percent reduction in the use of pesticides and a five percent increase in suppliers' performance scores for participating growers in that region.
Additional investments Starbucks has made in East Africa over the past five years include:
- Doubling the amount of East African coffee purchased from 2006 to 2008.
- More than $6.4 million to help East African coffee farmers and communities through grants focused on education, health services and capacity building.
- Programs with non-profit organizations such as CARE, AfriCare, African Wildlife Fund and WaterAid to address rural development challenges in the region – such as access to clean water and protecting biodiversity areas.
- An additional $1 million into a program to provide access to low interest loans to East African coffee farmers through the non-profit lender Root Capital, for a total of $10 million in loans to coffee farmers worldwide. Starbucks has stated a commitment to provide $20 million in farmer loans by 2015.
