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Gishamwana Island Coffee — Lake Kivu, Rwanda Just a short boat ride away from Rwanda’s Lake Kivu shoreline, there rests a secluded coffee island often mistaken for a mirage: Gishamwana Island. More than 35,000 coffee trees are planted on this site, and it's milled and dried here as well, completing the production cycle. The island is biodiverse, with environmental harmony in mind, and cows, goats, and even an albino rabbit coexists with the coffee trees. This island coffee farm is privately owned by Emmanuel Rwakagara, the founder of COOPAC, and the coffee is grown organically amongst forestry that provides a level of shade much greater than is typical for African coffee. Also, by nature of Gishamwana's isolation from other coffee, many diseases and pests quite simply have not made the boat ride over. This coffee is harvested at ripeness, depulped, dry fermented, wet fermented, washed, soaked, then dried on raised beds.
For more information about coffee production in Rwanda, visit our Rwanda origin page.
