Epiphanie Mukashyaka and Samuel Muhirwa - Ubumwe & Remera
Ubumwe
Location: Kamonyi District, Southern Province
Washing station: Ubumwe
Owner: BUF Company
Elevation: 1550 - 1700 metres above sea level
Varietals: Red Bourbon
Bought since: 2022
Remera
Location: Kamonyi District, Southern Province
Washing station: Remera
Owner: BUF Company
Elevation: 1550 - 1700 metres above sea level
Varietals: Red Bourbon
Bought since: 2022
The company Buf café was founded in 2003 by Epiphanie Mukashyaka, a dynamic businesswoman and a source of inspiration to countless other female entrepreneurs in Rwanda’s coffee sector and beyond. Buf is now managed by Epiphanie and her son, Samuel Muhirwa, who takes an active role in running and expanding the business. The title ‘Buf’ derives from ‘Bufundu’, the former name of the region in which its washing stations are located.
We first bought coffee from Epiphanie in 2015, but then the coffee came from the washing station called Nyaruzisa.
Epiphanie, who was born in 1959, was widowed during the 1994 genocide - which claimed over 800,000 lives in just 3 months - but chose not to leave her family’s small coffee farm. Instead, she set about rebuilding and developing her business and with it the local community. She started Buf Café in 2003 when she established her first washing station with a loan from the Rwandan Development Bank and the assistance of the USAID-financed PEARL project.
This transformational programme was aimed at switching the focus in the Rwandan coffee sector from a historic emphasis on quantity to one on quality - and so opening up Rwanda to the far higher-earning speciality coffee market. The programme and its successor, SPREAD, have been invaluable in helping Rwanda’s small-scale coffee farmers to rebuild their production in the wake of the devastating 1994 genocide and the 1990s world coffee crash.
Buf owns four coffee washing stations – Remera, Nyarusiza, Umurage and Ubumwe. The company is now procuring coffee cherries from almost 7,500 smallholder farmers in the Southern province of Rwanda, among them, 1,069 are registered members.
Located in the Kamonyi District which is only 20 minutes far away from the capital city Kigali. This CWS had fallen into disrepair until Buf rescued it to serve the surrounding population of smallholder farmers.
Buf has very strong links with the local communities that supply it, providing jobs for hundreds. At the end of each season, Buf will share any surplus profits with both the cooperatives with which it works and its washing station managers.
Before investing in the Ubumwe, Buf did a great amount of research regarding the potential for quality in the region. They found that the Ubumwe area has rich soil nutrients which contribute directly to cherry ripeness and root development. This nutritional difference has a huge impact on coffee growing and, therefore, Ubumwe produces an outstanding quality coffee.
The majority of the small farmers in the area have an average of only 300 coffee trees and use some of their lands to cultivate other crops such as maize and beans to feed themselves and their families. Most of their income from the sale of coffee is used to take their children to school, pay for medical care and for investment in livestock such as a cow for milk, both for use in the home and for sale locally.
