Mahembe

Justin Musabyimana worked as a driver for a local agricultural organization, NAEB, for many years, now has his own processing station called Mahembe, which he established in 2010 at his father’s coffee plantation. He grows coffee on eight hectares and also buys the cherries of five hundred nearby farmers. Musabyimana has introduced a number of innovations that help preserve the unique flavors of local coffees during processing. The harvest runs from March to August and it peaks in May-June. First, the coffee cherries are sorted in washing channels, followed by wet fermentation in concrete tanks. Then the seeds are washed, dried in the shade, sorted by hand according to their quality, and then further dried on raised beds. To protect against the harmful effects of temperature fluctuations and rains, coffee beans are covered with cloth during the hottest hours of the day and at night.