The on-line auctioning of 24 Rwandan coffees which received recognition during this year’s prestigious Coffee Cup of Excellence (COE) event is slated for today. The Marketing Manager of Rwanda’s Coffee Development Authority (Ocir-Café), Beninya Izabiriza, said that the function will be held at the Bourbon Coffee café at MTN Centre, Nyarutarama. Initially, the auctioning was scheduled for 14th of October 2008. However Ocir-Café opted to postpone the auctioning due to the presence of the World Specialty Coffee Conference and Exhibition in Tokyo, Japan. Alex Kanyakole, the Director General of Ocir-Café explained that the coffee authority felt the auctioning would not get more attention from international bidders with the presence of another world coffee event. Bidders are said to be coffee buyers and sellers worldwide.In an interview recently, Kanyakole revealed that the winning coffee samples were sent to 160 companies in 25 countries worldwide for examination before making bids. The coffees were selected in August this year during Africa’s first International Cup of Excellence which Rwanda hosted. Despite holding a similar event known as the Golden Cup of Excellence in 2007, the event was also the first on Rwandan soil. The Golden cup of Excellence was said to be paving way for the CoE. The CoE event is the most esteemed award given out to excelling coffees in the world. After the pre-selection phase in which 125 coffees were involved, 50 coffees remained for the national jury level while only 24 samples were found to meet the international coffee quality standards. The winning coffees were chosen by a select group of competent national and international cuppers. The Multi-sector Investment Group Ltd (MIG) and FAKCO - Rulindo emerged as first and second respectively. Ends
