GENEVA, SWITZERLAND, June 20, 2016 – In October 2012, Sucafina and some of our commercial partners established Kahawatu Foundation to respond to the decreasing productivity and quality of coffee in East Africa and to address the subsequent negative socioeconomic consequences affecting millions of individuals in the region.
Thanks to the support of Sucafina, Kahawatu has evolved to become a multi-stakeholder sustainable development initiative and has established a solid network of partners such as ICO, IDH, GIZ, Nestlé and Starbucks.
“Kahawatu aims to support rural communities in East African coffee producing countries to achieve economic, social and environmental sustainability,” said Gilbert Sindjou, Sustainability Manager. “Its activities focus on enabling smallholder growers to increase productivity and optimize income within a competitive market while preserving soils, water, and ecosystems.”
In mid-2013, Burundi became the first country in which Kahawatu Foundation deployed its activities. Since then, Kahawatu has enabled more than 14,000 Burundian smallholder growers to develop the skills and access the resources they need to reach economic, social, and environmental sustainability.
“Sucafina recognizes today that in order to drive further change in the most efficient manner, a harmonization of its sustainability efforts across East Africa is necessary,” said Nicolas A. Tamari, CEO of Sucafina.
As a result, Sucafina has taken the decision to designate Kahawatu Foundation as its implementer of all of its sustainability projects in Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda as of June 2016, under the leadership of Julia Anbalagan, the director of the Foundation. This will allow for a more consistent and systematic approach, which Sucafina believes will drive best practices and ultimately impact growers' lives in the most significant way possible.
About Kahawatu Foundation
Kahawatu Foundation is a private Foundation based in Geneva, Switzerland. The Foundation was established in 2012 to respond to the decreasing productivity and quality of coffee in East Africa and to address subsequent socio economic consequences. Learn more at: www.kahawatu.org