The Rwanda Coffee Development Authority (Ocir-Cafe) plans to distribute one million coffee seedlings this year. These will be an addition to the four million seedlings distributed last year.

This is intended to stimulated coffee production and revenues in the coming years as the country targets to earn up to $120 million receipts by 2011. It will be generated from 35,000 to 40,000 tonnes of coffee.

The Ocir-Café Director General, Alex Kanyankole, said that the seedlings are tolerant to major coffee diseases such as coffee leaf rust and coffee berry disease and have high yields.

"The seedlings are supplied by the National Agricultural Research Institute (ISAR) for multiplication and dissemination to rural coffee farmers,” he added during an interview recently. The seedlings are expected to be planted on about 10,000 hectares of land.

According to the coffee board, each district will also have a coffee task force to increase production amongst over 55,000 across the country on about 33,000 hectares of land, with each farmer owning 170 coffee trees.

Kanyankole said that last year’s distribution exercise is expected to end within next month having started it towards the end of 2008.

"We will concentrate more on planting before distributing the a million seedlings later this year.”

The development of coffee seedlings by ISAR was because of a reduction in coffee tree productivity in terms of both quality and quantity. This was believed to be due to the existence of old coffee trees among others.

Coffee is one of the country’s key export earners. Because of this it is therefore necessary to replace the old coffee trees with new ones.

With the expected increase in production, Ocir-Cafe has also sought for more markets in Asia to supplement the market in Europe, Middle-East and the United States. This will be accompanied by aggressive marketing such as exhibitions and competitions each year to increase revenues.

The coffee board also plans to setup a roasting plant with an initial processing capacity of 2,000 tonnes, to boost the quality of exported produce. A higher local consumption of coffee has also been targeted to cater for the projected production.

Currently, the coffee sector in Rwanda is served by 148 cooperatives and 130 coffee washing stations. The country expects to earner about $60 million (Rwf32.8 billion) from about 28,000 tonnes of coffee this year.

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