Kivubelt Coffee

Kivubelt Coffee, founded in 2011 under Teuscher Invest Ltd, built a vertically integrated operation on the Rwandan shore of Lake Kivu: three farms carrying more than 90,000 coffee trees, feeding into two washing stations at Murundo and Jarama villages. The company's own coffee sits alongside cherry delivered by more than 500 smallholder families each season, who bring their harvest to the same washing stations and receive premium payments plus technical assistance on quality and agronomy in return — a direct-trade structure rather than a market-price purchase arrangement. Growing conditions are shaped by the lake itself: high elevation, humid mist rolling off Kivu's surface, and volcanic soils carried down from the Virunga volcano chain, which the company points to as the source of the coffee's character. The green beans, fully washed Arabica, ship to buyers in the United States, Europe and Japan rather than being roasted and sold locally as a finished product — this is a producer and exporter, not a retail cafe. Beyond the coffee itself, Kivubelt folds in a community-development mandate, funding local education and healthcare initiatives from the same operation that supplies its farmer network with premium payments, positioning quality control and rural investment as one connected system rather than two separate efforts.