In 2012, Angèle Ciza decided to go into the coffee business. With a friend, she purchased a number of washing stations, hoping to work closely with growers as a means to begin processing some of the best coffees in the country. Ciza sadly passed away in 2022, but her legacy and tremendous impact lives on through her company, Kalico (short for Kahawa Link Company)—a name synonymous with specialty coffee in Burundi. Kalico is now managed by Ciza’s son, Alexandre Shaka Mugisha, and works with seven washing stations in the region, processing high quality coffees from natural to honey to washed. This lot comes from the Kigobe Washing Station, which serves approximately 600 smallholder farmers from the Tugwizikawa (translation: “Let’s Rise Coffee”) cooperative.
Through an emphasis on agricultural education, the quality of the coffees produced through Kalico’s partnership has grown steadily—along with prices paid to farmers, and improvements for women. Kalico invests continually in training, environmental protection, micro-finance, and other social causes such as a scholarship program to pay for school fees for young girls. 70% of the producers they work with are women, and Kalico directly provides essentials to these women like loincloths and farm animals (who will provide them with organic fertilizer for the soil).
This is our fourth season offering this coffee from the Rotheca Project, an initiative between Kalico, Phyllis Johnson of BD Imports, and RGC importers, organized to combat poverty and support women-produced coffee in Burundi. It not only represents the quality Burundi has to offer, but also embodies the vision of Ciza, whose work has uplifted thousands of farmers and continues to be a source of inspiration, especially for the women whose labor is so essential to coffee production in Burundi.
