Despite a steep decrease in international prices, coffee still brings in 70 percent of Burundi’s foreign exchange earnings reports The East African. Last year the country exported 13,000 tonnes last year out of the available 17,000 tonnes of green coffee to Europe, United States and Asia, according to an official of the Burundi Coffee Regulatory Authority, or ARFIC.
Burundi coffee is exported through the ports of Mombasa in Kenya and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.
More than 600,000 families in Burundi depend on coffee for their livelihood.
Burundi has 170 coffee washing stations and eight dry mills with an average harvest of 19,000 tonnes of coffee. 75 per cent of the coffee farmers have access to the market directly without going through agents.
Eight per cent of the coffee produced in Burundi is exported to the East African market, with only Uganda and Rwanda buying it.
