Most of the flavoured tea used in Rwanda like ginger, lemongrass, and chamomile flavours – is imported, and even then it is rarely available in local shops.

The underlying reasons for this is the scarcity of spices such as ginger and the culture of tea consumption among Rwandans.

Hamim Kabagambe, Managing Director of Rwanda Tea Packers Ltd – a subsidiary of Rwanda Mountain Tea – says the company started making ginger flavoured tea over a year ago, but expressed concern over the shortage of needed ginger flavour.

"We need a tonne of well dried and ground ginger flavour to make tea,” he said pointing out that they get around half of that.

Every month, the firm makes nearly a tonne of ginger flavoured tea, just 3 per cent of its monthly tea production.

Due to high demand, he says, flavoured tea sells out very quickly.

There’s low supply of ginger because the crop is relatively new among Rwandan farmers.

To compound that challenge, tea processors say that most of the produce available on the market is not well dried or handled, which weakens its quality, and hence making it unsuitable for use in tea.

In addition, poor handling of other spice crops such as lemongrass continues to weigh down the quality.

The Covid-19 outbreak was a setback for Rwanda Tea Packers’ ambitions to increase its diversification into flavoured teas.

The firm had shipped in machinery that processes and packages flavours including ginger and lemongrass, targeting the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM).

The move, Kabagambe said, was meant to occupy the market that is dominated by imports.

However, there are some flavours like chamomile that are not yet available in Rwanda, meaning the country still has to rely on imports.

"Soon, we will be making flavoured teas here such that they will not be imported as we will be having the capacity to satisfy the local market,” Kabagambe said, suggesting that the government should consider reducing taxes on imported flavours that cannot be produced locally.

Rohith Peiris, Director General of Sorwathe Ltd said that factors which might be hindering the production of tea with various flavours in Rwanda include very low interest [in such tea].

"We produce a very small per centage (less than 0.5%) using herbs from our gardens. We have lemon grass. ginger and rosemary. We produce on demand,” he said.

"If the customers want we will increase production,” he said as he responded to the question on efforts or plans to make tea with different flavours.

Globally, he says, flavouring of tea is done by artificial flavours which are not available in Rwanda and very expensive.

Low domestic consumption for tea

NAEB Communication Officer, Pie Ntwari, told The New Times that the factors limiting the availability of flavoured tea in Rwanda include the low rate of consumption of the beverage among Rwandans.

"In the Rwandan culture, consumption of tea is not a common practice,” he said.

Overall, estimates from NAEB suggest that only 1.7 per cent of processed tea in Rwanda is consumed locally. The rest is exported.

Figures from the Ministry of Trade and Industry show that imports of flavoured black and green tea are rising steadily from 6,161 kilogrammes worth over $12,650 in 2019 to 33,536 kilogrammes equivalent to $79,206 in monetary value in 2019.

From January to June 2020, more than 28,500 kilogrammes of flavoured black and green tea worth over $53,000 (about Rwf50 million) were imported into Rwanda.

editor@newtimesrwanda.com