Fairtrade Customer Spotlight – Cocagi Coffee Cooperative

Posted by Patrick

August 6, 2009

Another coffee co-operative in Rwanda, the third in nine months, has started to use Shared Interest’s export credit facilities, a demonstration of Shared Interest’s growing reputation in that country.

COCAGI is located in the Gishoma district of western Rwanda (the name stands for Co-operative des caféculteurs de Gishoma). It started with just 22 members in 2003 and now has 684, all smallholder coffee growers each with a share worth equivalent to five US dollars. COCAGI buys coffee cherries from its members and processes them. About 84% is exported and the remainder is sold on the domestic market. COCAGI has been Fairtrade certified since May 2005.

COCAGI’s two main customers are not fair trade organisations and do not make advance payments. The farmers will not, or cannot afford to, deliver their harvest to the co-operative and so COCAGI has to borrow to pay them. Until now COCAGI has been borrowing from a local bank but this is a difficult and lengthy process. Other buyers take advantage of this situation and buy the harvest from COCAGI’s members for cash, but at a lower price. Shared Interest’s export credit facility should solve this problem, which would only have got worse because COCAGI is forecasting a 59% increase in export sales this year.