027 - Stanislas Kayitera

027 - Stanislas KayiteraThe sixth coffee of our 2026 season comes to us from Stanislas Kayitera, a smallholder who has historically contributed to larger collections from hundreds of producers at Baho's Akagera site in Rwanda. This lot demonstrates how large scale and community factories can be leveraged to create value for individual smallholders through intentional lot separation from cherry collection through to processing and milling, presenting in the cup with bright

The sixth coffee of our 2026 season comes to us from Stanislas Kayitera, a smallholder who has historically contributed to larger collections from hundreds of producers at Baho's Akagera site in Rwanda. This lot demonstrates how large-scale and community factories can be leveraged to create value for individual smallholders through intentional lot separation from cherry collection through to processing and milling, presenting in the cup with bright notes of white grapefruit, lime, green melon, and orange with brown sugar sweetness.

From Christopher: "I'm enthusiastic about supporting young importing companies when I can, particularly when they've committed to marketing coffee from a particular producer or supply chain. This interest—coupled with my love for coffee from Rwanda—led me to begin buying from Ben Bowdoin and his company, Sundog Trading, in 2020.

"In the 1970s and 1980s, coffee played a central role in the economy of Rwanda and provided a living for hundreds of thousands of smallholder coffee farmers and their families. The industry collapsed, however, following the implosion of the International Coffee Agreement, which devastated prices, and the genocide that followed in the aftermath. Following the end of the genocide, coffee production took a central role in the economic and cultural reconstruction of Rwanda.

"One of the genocide's survivors, Emmanuel Rusatira, would go on to first manage washing stations for other exporters and then eventually found his own export company and washing stations—establishing his company with a mission of celebrating his joie de vivre and the perseverance of the Rwandan while promoting meaningful economic opportunity for his community.

"In April of last year, I chatted with Ben and Emmanuel at SCA Expo in Houston about what our collaboration would look like for the coming year. For Aviary's 2025 season, we'd explored honey processing at one of Baho's stations, and I wanted to continue refining the cup and devised a number of processing protocols for 2026. When the pre-ship samples arrived in September, I was ecstatic with the resulting cups and asked Ben to proceed to shipment.

"But when you work across continents and timezones and months as we do in coffee, things don't always go according to plan. The coffee that eventually became AVIARY#027 wasn't the coffee I had in mind for this release—but nonetheless, it's one I'm thrilled to present.

"In many contexts in coffee—particularly in East Africa—scale and volume are prioritized first, as it's easier and more economical to mill, sell and ship larger lots versus microlots. Thus, it's standard practice for microlots to be deprioritized; even if it's not my preference, it's not usually an issue in compressed harvest cycles and when coffee can be stored and stabilized in GrainPro or other protective barriers to prevent a coffee's humidity from rising after primary postharvest activities were completed.

"But the conflict between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo made the transportation of goods into the country difficult. A shortage of GrainPro bags meant that the coffee sat unprotected awaiting the rest of the harvest to complete prior to milling; as its moisture crept up, so too did the risk of quality degradation prior to export. We worked to recover, but at every turn were met with interference: there were no vacuum bags available, and the cost of air shipping escalated as Russia's invasion of Ukraine dragged on, raising the risk profile further and further still.

"After a month of effort, we had to abandon our plan and pivot: instead of pulling my volume from Sundog and Baho—both long-term partners and collaborators of mine—we looked to replace the lot with another.

"Back in 2020 or 2021, I bought coffee through Sundog from Baho for the first time, from Emmanuel's station at Akagera—just a year after Baho took over the site from the financially struggling Kobakanya Cooperative. In the years that followed, coffees coming from the 515 farmers growing coffee on that hill—including Kobakanya, still in partnership with Baho—consistently cupped above the other stations, even those with higher elevations or apparently more attention. 

"One of the smallholders who contributed to those collections was Stanislas—a founding member of the Kobakanya Cooperative. A coffee farmer for more than 40 years—beginning before the genocide against the Tutsis—Stanislas grew on 5 hectares, an area roughly 20 times larger than the national average and large enough to produce coffee that could justify its own separation.

"During my work with Crop to Cup in Ethiopia, I advocated for a strategy of using community and cooperative washing station infrastructure—large-scale and designed for volumetric production—to benefit individual smallholders. By isolating their collections, processing them separately and maintaining their integrity through export, we could deliver greater value for those producers while benefitting the collective.

"Emmanuel agrees and wants to highlight the work of model farmers in the communities in which his business operates. In his words: 'These are farmers that do coffee farming as a business and they really show full commitment to their work. They serve as model in good agricultural practices, soil management, erosion control, environmental conservation practices as well as giving jobs to many other small farmers in need especially during harvest…The reason why Baho coffee selected to process and market their production separately from others is because we wanted to motivate them. Selling coffee in their names makes them proud and increases their energy and commitment. Baho will market, promote their coffee and pay them better prices that is higher than any other farm in the region/country.

"So when the coffee we produced together failed—and when a lot from Stanislas showed up on my table using a strategy I've promoted and coming from a hill whose coffee I've long cherished—I saw an ideal candidate for replacement.

"Stanislas' coffee is an exemplar of the style of coffee that Baho and its contributing farmers excel at producing but with laser-refined precision, presenting in the cup with bright, tropical notes of lime, grapefruit, green melon and orange with a brown sugar sweetness and black tea florality."