EASTERN PROVINCE NGOMA — The State Minister for agriculture Daphrose Gahakwa has urged residents to work hard if they are to eradicate poverty in their midst.Gahakwa made the appeal this Wednesday while visiting coffee farmers of Murama sector during the planting of coffee trees. She advised all residents to join cooperative societies and work together to eradicate poverty. “Growing coffee is not an activity that has just started but it is something that existed years ago,” Gahakwa said. She hailed the level at which the cooperative society has reached. “If all Rwandans could reach at your level and be hard working as you are, Rwanda would achieve all her economic development goals in the shortest time possible,” she said, She added: “your cooperative society stands out of the crowd. Even though the government puts in more efforts in this exercise, it is yours because you are the government.” About 500,000 coffee trees were planted on 20 hectares land belonging to members of -IAKB -coffee farmers’ cooperative society. Another additional 100,000 trees were planted last months in Gitaraga cell Rurenge sector. The farmers have a plan of planting about 340,000 coffee plants before the end of this year with assistance from Small holder Cash and Export Crops Development Project (PDCRE), a project that helps in promoting and developing of cash crops in Rwanda. Started in 1999 with 300 members, IAKB now has 1562 members and is one of the cooperative societies in the country that extensively produce quality coffee. This year the cooperative earned Frw40 million above the projected income through export of 75 tones of coffee. “Within a period of three years, we hope to become one of the big exporters of quality coffee in the country,” Ephraim Ndengabanizi, the president of the cooperative society said. However, the cooperative still faces a number of challenges including transport means to transfer coffee from villages and poor road connection. “Our biggest problem here is inadequate water to clean our coffee whenever there is increased production. This reduces on our quantity of exports because the coffee that goes bad is sold to local dealers.”Ends
