Mukura Natural 

Mukura Washing Station sits at 1,500 to 2,000 meters above sea level in Gakenke District, Rwanda’s Northern Province. Gakenke has become an established center for Rwanda’s specialty coffee production, with farmer cooperatives helping connect smallholders to international markets. Its fertile volcanic soil and cool mountain climate provide favorable conditions for growing high-quality Arabica. 

Established in 2025 and managed by Baho Coffee, Mukura washing station works with local farmers to produce specialty-grade and fully traceable coffee. The station processes cherries using both Fully washed and Natural methods, with an annual processing capacity of more than 160 tons. Its focus on quality at every stage brings out the distinctive characteristics of the region. 

This Natural lot delivers a fruit-forward profile, complemented by notes of honey, dried fig and warm caramel for a sweet, expressive cup. 

Farmers in Rwanda have small coffee plots, usually around 250 trees. Most coffee trees are intercropped with food crops like maize and potatoes. Despite their small size, for many, coffee remains the main cash crop and their biggest source of income throughout the year.   

“Farmers are motivated to produce quality coffee, but their efforts are [historically] not well remunerated. Coffee prices are not meeting farmers’ expectations,” says Rusatira Emmanuel, Managing Director of Baho Coffee. This is why washing stations countrywide, including those owned by Baho Coffee, are striving to incentivize high-quality coffee production with better prices and support for farmers seeking to improve the quality of their harvest.    

In the early 2000s the Rwandan government, with the input of international partners, identified coffee as a potentially key generator of much needed export revenue. To improve the quality of coffee, the government has incentivized the creation of new washing stations in coffee producing areas and has partnered with local stakeholders to make sure that farmers are the main beneficiaries.   

As one measure to this end, the government supports washing stations by providing inputs. The stations, in turn, transport the inputs from government warehouses to the area so farmers can access them more easily. The station is also involved in training farmers how to use inputs properly.

Smallholder farmers deliver freshly picked cherries to Mukura washing station. Each batch is inspected and hand-sorted to remove damaged or under-ripe cherries before weighing. Farmers are then paid based on the quality and volume of cherries delivered. 

For Natural lots such as this one, selected cherries are spread across raised beds to dry. During this stage, cherries are turned frequently to ensure even drying. Workers carefully inspect the cherries throughout the process, manually removing any defective ones to prevent spoilage. Drying typically takes 3 weeks, depending on weather conditions. 

Screens are used to separate beans by size. The process of separating beans by size is a crucial stage of the dry milling process. A screen grading machine has a series of screens stacked on top of each other. Green coffee is fed into the machine, and as the screens are shaken, beans that are smaller than holes on a specific screen will fall through to a lower screen until they reach a screen with holes too small for them to fit.  

Beans in a Scr. 15+ blend will be larger than 6 millimeters.  

Rusatira Emmanuel is the founder and owner of Baho Coffee. Rusatira established Baho Coffee in 2013 after a long career in coffee that began as a washing station manager and culminated in a position as head of a department, managing a number of stations. Today, Baho Coffee oversees four washing stations across Rwanda. With one station in each of the coffee producing provinces, Baho Coffee has access to a wide range of profiles and processing methods.  

In addition to providing a number of educational, financial and agricultural services to farmers, Baho Coffee also has several social programs that are geared towards helping farmers, especially marginalized groups like women, older farmers and youth.  

Rusatira, who was personally affected by the Rwandan genocide that took place in 1994, focuses on helping women because he understands firsthand that many families lost many male members during the genocide. As a consequence, Rusatira explains, many Rwandan families are headed by women. Single motherhood—whether caused by the genocide, lack of access to family planning or other circumstances—is often lonely and isolated. Rusatira’s intention is to bring typically isolated single mothers together and ease that isolation while also providing support and training to help them improve their circumstances. 

 Rusatira’s plan is to process and sell the coffee from women-led families separately. A key part of this plan is to include not only a wide range of information on the lives and conditions of the women in the group but also to include a letter, written by the women in the group, detailing how their station and their customers can help them overcome specific challenges in their lives.  

In addition to his program to help single mothers, Rusatira is also focusing on helping older farmers continue to feel relevant and to support young farmers in establishing and improving their farms. He is confident that Baho Coffee’s impact will continue to grow year after year. “As a small company we’re on a small scale,” he said. “But I keep extending.”