Coffee-Trail Biking in Rwanda: A New High-End Tourism Product

Countries get rich by making or doing things and selling these goods and services.

Rwanda is on the cusp of the most significant and promising economic changes in its history. But to make these potential changes a reality, Rwanda will have to turn its geographical disadvantages into assets by becoming a regional hub for business services, finance, information technology and the duty-free warehousing of consumer goods. Rwanda will need to become a not-to-bemissed destination for tourists inbound to Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda for wildlife excursions, offering strategically packaged ‘experiences’ that none of these three can provide. Rwanda will have to leverage its status as a safe, orderly environment where foreign investors build industrial facilities for adding value to timber and minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It will have to become the Dubai of Central Africa, a forward-based warehouse and transaction centre connected to suppliers in the Gulf and China.

Rwanda’s landlocked position, far from a port or a large regional market, is a major disadvantage in realising such a vision. Certainly, it has made the costs of transport very high; and has meant, too, that the cost of inputs into business, especially manufacturing enterprises, has until now been prohibitive.

Yet Rwanda can use its location to its advantage. It has the potential, for example, to set up a regional financial centre, partly by employing the methods of tax haven states. For example, Chile encourages foreign-owned companies to set up head offices by not levying taxes on funds received from foreign assets. Considering the wealth in the DRC and elsewhere in the region, Rwanda could become the regional financial centre – or ‘Switzerland’ – of Central Africa. Similarly, it could become a good place to add value to imported materials that are then re-exported to the rest of the region.

A very good international airport could make Rwanda a hub for travel to Central Africa, based on location, ease of connections and the cost of the airport. This could be tied to a tax and duty-free zone like that in Dubai, where people and companies from neighbouring countries can shop and purchase everything from cars to foie gras. This would give the rich from the DRC, Uganda and elsewhere the opportunity to buy in Rwanda what they can usually only get in Europe. Far from being a handicap, therefore, Rwanda’s location could be an advantage in realising most of these prospects.

Certainly, a diversification and growth strategy also requires reducing the cost of moving things to market, currently around 40% of the value of exports. Put differently, it costs five times as much to move a container from Kigali to Mombasa than it does from the Kenyan port to a major destination in Europe, the United States or Asia.

Success is more than just about reducing costs. It also requires increasing the products – both goods and services – on offer.

Apart from foreign aid (which accounts for US$500 million in income annually), the principal sources of income for the Rwandan economy are minerals, coffee and tourism, about US$60 million, US$70 million and US$35 million, respectively.

The coffee industry has changed tremendously over the past four decades. Where it was once heavily government controlled and focused on low-grade beans, today it is liberalised and focuses on the top-end, high-return Bourbon coffees. While the production of coffee fell from a peak of 40,000 tonnes in 1987 to 14,000 tonnes in 2003, the production of higher-grade coffee as a percentage of the total produced has risen from virtually zero in 1995 to around half the production total of 25,000 tonnes produced today. Currently, only 20% of world coffee qualifies as specialty coffee. Whereas low-grade coffee sells for 28 US cents per kilo on average, specialty coffee earns 80 cents per kilo or more. Still more value can be added to the producer by increasing the number of washing stations (washed beans obtain more value) in Rwanda, and through improved extension services to the farmer to ensure a better bean. Coffee is not only a key foreign exchange earner, but also the source of livelihood of 500,000 smallholder farming families.

Rwandan tourism is concentrated in the top-end, high-yield ‘gorilla’ market. The Rwandan government has, until now, preferred to realise slow growth in this area, adding further numbers to the 38,000 tourists who now visit the country annually through hosting regular international conferences. This is still off the pre-genocide peak of 39,000 visitors per year. Even if it manages this and in so doing reaches its target of 70,000 visitors and US$100 million in receipts per year by 2010, this is not enough to meet development demands and to fuel the process of reaching its ambitious vision.

There is much to be gained by broadening the target market to other strata without losing the preferred practice of higher-yield, low-environmental-impact tourism. Rwanda has enormous potential in opening up its eco- and cultural tourism assets to the international market. Understanding these analogies better and their relevance is key. Rwanda is well placed to conceive of distinct, marketable, different tourist experiences and to target markets within these. Without doing this, the country’s ambitious development plans are unlikely to be realised.

This paper focuses on what the tourism sector can do to increase the products on offer. In doing so, it assumes that difficulties in the air sector can be resolved; and indeed, increasing the range of tourist services may assist in resolving such problems.

Rwanda and Tourism

Rwanda’s tourism strategy, which targets upper-end visitors for the mountain gorilla experience, has been remarkably successful, but has clear limitations and constraints to growth and sustainability. There needs to be more to tourism in Rwanda if it is to become the undisputed cornerstone and lifeblood of the economy that will ultimately drive growth and development in the country.

According to the Rwandan Tourism Office (ORTPN), tourism has increased tenfold in the last eight years. Between 2002 and 2007 alone the number of visitors to Rwanda grew from just 10,000 to over 38,000, and national income from tourism increased from less than US$5 million to nearly US$40 million in 2007.

The goal of 70,000 visitors by 2010 may be achievable, given the sector’s growth in recent years. But a number of emerging constraints, such as a limit on the number of permits granted for the gorilla visits and a marked increase in the cost of the permit, as well as ‘uncontrollables’ like political stability in the region, a possible recession in the United States, or economic slowdown and its consequent lower spending in Europe – not to mention airline access, which has become a more serious concern in recent months in Rwanda – may dampen expected growth.² More products are needed, as intimated above, to drive this growth.

Experience from countries that have pursued a similar strategy to Rwanda – like Costa Rica – shows that the upper-end market, with an emphasis on ecotourism, is both highly sensitive and has serious limitations, given its narrow and focused target market.

Services require constant improvement, but, more importantly, countries like Costa Rica have discovered the need to diversify beyond merely eco- and adventure tourism, even if these were the foundation of their national tourism strategy and the source of their initial growth.

Costa Rica and, perhaps to a lesser degree, Colombia have introduced a new area of rural tourism into the array of activities that they can offer to foreign and local visitors. This tends to complement existing areas of eco-tourism, as it shares the sentiment of education and outdoor activities – which is evidently favoured by the types of tourists that visit these locations – and it also helps to better utilise (and promote) the national products often associated with the country – notably coffee.

Coffee tourism (and coffee tours) is one of the fastest-growing areas of tourism in Costa Rica and Colombia. These countries are two of the most renowned producers of premium Arabic coffee in the world. The activities offered through coffee tourism are often closely associated with eco-tourism – given the growth of demand for organic coffee, which seems to go hand in hand with conservation and birding. Apart from the learning experience linked with coffee tourism, adventure activities like hiking and biking (cycling), already well established in both Costa Rica and Colombia, could well be the next step in the creative expansion of tourism in these countries.

Rwanda, and Rwanda’s emerging coffee industry – which is still severely underutilised in the area of tourism – is an ideal tourism vehicle, especially given the country’s natural and even dramatic beauty and its raw potential in outdoor activities – and biking in particular. The famous wooden bike and the new coffee bikes (see below) are synonymous with Rwandan coffee and coffee picking in the plantations and rural areas, much like the Willy’s Jeep in Colombia and ox-drawn cart in Costa Rica, which are symbols of coffee in those countries. These utility bikes are symbolic of an existing culture of biking and an established local interest on which the idea of coffee-trail biking can be built.

Coffee-trail biking would integrate new factions of society and new sectors of the Rwandan economy into the growing tourism trade. It would also provide alternative activities for tourists visiting Rwanda – by giving them something else to do besides seeing the gorillas – and help them to learn more about the country, its primary economic activities and the lifestyles of people whose livelihoods depend on these activities.

Coffee-trail biking will allow visitors to spend more time in Rwanda and provide greater incentive for Americans and Europeans to make the long trip to the country. It will thus generate new avenues of revenue and integrate communities previously excluded from the tourism sector (thus having a direct impact on development in some of the rural areas) and also target a new pool of tourists, beside the exclusive upper-enders, who are interested in visiting Rwanda.

Easy access to the biking trails and their low cost relative to the current gorilla packages will further open Rwandan tourism to a new group of adventure or backpacking tourists and, importantly, to the already large and growing ex-pat community, which is yet to be targeted effectively by the country’s tourism strategy.

This group of potential tourists are constantly seeking activities to keep themselves busy over weekends and holidays, and are generally interested in venturing outdoors and exploring the country off the beaten track. What better way to do so than on a bicycle?

Rural Tourism in Coffee Country

Coffee tourism is a relatively new concept that has developed in selected coffee producing regions around the world. It has been particularly successful in countries that specialise in ecological and adventure tourism, where outdoor activities are the primary attraction of the country. But coffee-producing countries have focused on different areas of coffee tourism, depending on the types of skills and resources available and the nature of the market they are seeking to attract.

Colombia, for example, has capitalised on the famous coffee fincas that attract tourists (mostly locals) to the (often luxurious) colonial-style accommodation in its coffee country. Costa Rica, on the other hand, has opted for a more direct approach to rural or agrarian tourism, where visitors expect tours of coffee plantations along with a tasting or cupping experience.

Costa Rica’s coffee tours provide an interesting and even educational insight that is geared to piggyback and capitalise on existing channels of eco-tourism, accessing a targeted foreign market that is already familiar with the country. The strategy has been a collaborative effort involving the tourism board, private sector tour operators and coffee producers, along with famous Costa Rican coffee brands.³ The focus is on high-quality service that is offered by trained tour operators, which aims to add a new dimension and a new activity to the tourism experience in Costa Rica. The coffee plantations are scattered around the country in close proximity to existing tourist centres, and are thus easily accessible from hotels in San José or other cities and established tourist centres nearby.

Colombia’s coffee tourism experience, meanwhile, is slightly different, given the distance between the coffee region and other major tourism centres in the country. The nature of the market targeted for the coffee fincas also plays an important part in this strategy.

Colombia’s tourism is still predominantly local, with the only real exception being Cartagena on the Caribbean coast. Coffee producers in Colombia have therefore used their estates to attract tourists to the coffee region to experience the luxury and beauty of coffee plantation living. There has been less emphasis on agrarian tourism as such, or on understanding the coffee-producing process. The coffee fincas target the domestic market, which is generally less interested in the educational experience than the idea of relaxing over a weekend in coffee country. It has, however, spurred greater interest in eco- and adventure tourism, given the coffee region’s rich biodiversity and the close association between conservation and organic production – a new trend in Colombian coffee production. This is encouraging activities like hiking, biking and bird watching in the coffee region, which take place along the so-called coffee trails.

Rwanda’s coffee tourism will develop in its own unique circumstances and around existing attributes. Coffee and tourism are probably two of the most progressive sectors of the Rwandan economy, and are certainly the cornerstones of Rwanda’s positive image abroad. But they are both still in need of vast development and improvement – especially if they are to be linked in any constructive way that will be to the benefit of both sectors.

Some efforts have been made to promote coffee trails in Rwanda, but this is still limited and conducted mostly in an ad hoc way. Visitors are growing increasingly interested to see and learn more about Rwanda’s premium coffee and the African production process – mostly at the washing stations – that Rwandans are striving to perfect, with real results.⁴ But Rwanda has neither the extravagant fincas of Colombia nor the service and established tourism infrastructure of Costa Rica to add to the appeal. Despite this, it does have the characteristic coffee country beauty and the advantage of proximity between the plantations and washing stations and established tourist destinations.

Given Rwanda’s current strategy around eco- and adventure tourism, one of the best ways to visit the coffee plantations and washing stations and, in the process, see the Rwandan countryside and interact with Rwandans is on a bicycle. It is an active and relatively easy – and low-cost – way of experiencing coffee production and rural life in Rwanda through organised tours. These cycle tours could be developed as a promotional tool for Rwandan coffee, and in the process help diversify tourism activities in the country. These tours could also be conducted as short one-day recreational outings from centres such as Butare, where visitors/riders would depart in the morning, and visit washing stations and enjoy a lunch en route at one of the co-ops or at a coffee plantation. Longer and more rigorous biking trails can also be organised for more serious riders, which could eventually include overnight stops in plantations or locations further from existing tourism centres. The area south of Kibuye, around Lake Kivu, would be ideal for this, especially since there are a number of established washing stations and the Gisakura Tea Plantation – which would offer a similar experience – nearby.

Implementing Coffee-trail Biking in Rwanda

What is currently being done?

The idea of bringing together coffee, tourism and biking also brings together different aspects of the socioeconomic fabric of Rwanda. Coffee-trail biking will draw tourists closer to the rural reality of Rwanda and give them the opportunity to witness and even become involved with the primary economic activity of the country. They will have the opportunity to see and engage with rural Rwandans (farmers, berry pickers and washers) and see first hand the beauty of rural Rwanda, while physically experiencing the dramatic topography that the country has become so famous for.

The idea of coffee tourism on a bike is not entirely new. A few people and organisations have already begun conceptualising and even implementing coffeetrail biking. SPREAD, a non-government organisation that was started nearly eight years ago to help develop the coffee industry and improve the production and income of small-scale coffee farmers through co-operatives, and Project Rwanda/Team Rwanda, which aims to promote development in Rwanda through the bicycle, have been involved in a number of coffee and biking tours.

Their combined efforts have already brought a number of tour groups to coffee plantations and washing stations, where they have witnessed the production process and participated in tasting or cupping activities. While SPREAD has focused on the coffee experience, Project Rwanda facilitates bike tours around the country and encourages tourist to experience the country on a bike.

In March 2008, SPREAD and Project Rwanda conducted the first coffee biking tour for an international tour operator called Java Ventures, which specialises in coffee educational tours around the world. It was a relatively short cycle (approximately five hours), which toured the coffee plantations and washing stations near Butare, interacted with the farmers and introduced the group to the idea of coffee co-operatives. It was done on the back of the (now famous) coffee bikes, allowing the tourists to ride the bikes that have been designed and developed by Project Rwanda and pitched to Rwandan coffee farmers for collection and transport purposes.⁵

Bourbon Coffee, the exclusive coffee bar restaurant, roastery and outlet, has also taken tour groups into the coffee region. As part of its effort to promote its coffee brands and Rwanda in general (mostly for its big clients), Bourbon Coffee has what they call the ‘Farmer for a Day’ initiative. Visitors are taken into the coffee plantations and are actively involved in the berry-picking and washing processes. They are then taken to the roastery and undertake a professionally guided cupping, when they are able to taste the product. This is a true example of rural or agrarian tourism that provides the real Rwandan coffee experience for visitors to the country.

Bourbon Coffee also promotes coffee tourism through its sales of coffee and an interactive tourism screen that provides virtual tours of coffee plantations in tourist regions across the country.

The combined efforts of all three of these organisations, along with the support of the ORTPN, will help establish coffee-trail biking or coffee biking tours and ensure that they are an integral part of the Rwandan tourism experience. Each has an important contribution to make through its insight into either coffee, biking or tourism (and the promotion of these particular activities), which will help ensure coffee biking trails are undertaken and executed in the best possible way – and in the process ensure that a broad scope of tourists are included.

How and by whom can it be done?

There are a range of coffee biking options available, all of which tend to complement one another and can thus be implemented together. These can be defined according to either time and distance – day tours or trails versus longer regional tours over two, three or even four days – or alternatively by geographical region, whereby particular coffee brands, coffee types or even varieties are promoted through the trail.

A sensible approach to this would be to encourage the collaboration of existing efforts already under way by SPREAD, Project Rwanda and Bourbon Coffee in the most coherent and comprehensive way. The ORTPN can assist with this, and while new tourist products or tourism developments do not seem to require a standard registration or evaluation process, the ORTPN does offer support and assistance to ensure quality of service and advice around basic tourism infrastructure and necessities. This is particularly important in reassuring tourists that the places they will visit (and possibly eat and sleep in) are of a specific standard, that the basic necessities and comforts will be provided, and that expectations will be satisfied. The ORTPN will also ultimately assist with the training of guides and will be an important source of support and promotion, which could involve tagging the coffee cycle trails with the gorillas and other tourism initiatives requiring control permits or organised tours.

There are approximately 48 washing stations operating across the various coffee regions of the country. These all make up or provide the basic infrastructure of the coffee biking tours. Tour groups will have the opportunity to visit these washing stations and the coffee plantations on mapped-out guided routes named after the brand or the co-op of that particular region. For example, visitors can tour the Maraba coffee bike trail near Butare, visit the washing stations, speak with the farmers and even taste the product. The washing station, coffee plantations and actual coffee biking route will be well signposted – much like the wineries in the wine regions of South Africa, Argentina, the United States, etc. Each region or coffee brand will have a route that can be explored and toured on
a bicycle.⁶

Basic maps that sketch out the regional coffee routes – and are sponsored by the brands – will be generated to provide some idea of the tours and trails available and the layout of the coffee country and washing stations that can be visited.

More detailed maps of the trails (and especially the longer tours) will be loaded on GPS units, which will be made available to cyclists and guides. The routes will be mapped out and designed by experts from Project Rwanda at a cost. This will ensure that the cycle routes and the overall experience are adventurous, while also being manageable and enjoyable for riders of all categories.

Maps, brochures and general information about the coffee bike trails and tours will be available at Bourbon Coffee outlets and at the ORTPN tourist offices around the country. Depending on the tour group, riders will either do the trail on bikes provided by Project Rwanda/Team Rwanda – made available particularly for these coffee trails – or even on the working coffee bikes, which will give the tour a more authentic feel similar to the Bourbon Coffee concept of the ‘Farmer for a Day’. The option of using one’s own bike will be another alternative, especially for those ex-pats living in the country who have their own bicycles, or for those cyclists undertaking longer tours.

The tours and maps will also be posted online, with links to the coffee trails from the ORTPN site and the sites of the associate organisations (SPREAD, Project Rwanda and Bourbon Coffee). Since much of the necessary infrastructure for such an initiative already exists, most of the initial costs will be related to the training of the guides and the mapping process. Some washing stations may need to be upgraded to cater for visitors and provide an area where tourists can not only witness the washing and production process, but also participate in a tasting or cupping and even enjoy a meal (lunch or snack) en route. The promotion of these coffee biking tours and the signposting of the washing stations and trails will be another necessary cost likely to be borne by the coffee brands, with some support from the ORTPN.

At first, accommodation may not be an essential prerequisite, as the washing stations and thus the trails are close to existing tourist centres and towns in Rwanda. For example, tourists wishing to visit Maraba coffee on a bicycle tour can do so from Butare, which is just a few kilometres from the coffee plantations. This way, once the tour is finished, riders can return to the comfort of their hotels in Butare. The same applies to coffee biking trails in Ruhengeri and near Gisenyi, where a vibrant tourism and hotel infrastructure already exists.

However, it would be useful to develop alternative accommodation in the plantation, a comfortable or even luxurious lodge or bed & breakfast establishment where cyclists can depart from one point – a co-op office – with the intention of ending the day’s riding at a particular destination in the midst of a coffee plantation. After all, the idea of cycling to a destination – a paradise – far from popular tourist centres carries a particular appeal to many.⁷ The region around the southern part of Lake Kivu lends itself to this particular type of coffee biking tour where, between Kibuye and Nyungwe Forest National Park, coffee plantations are in abundance and there are a number of washing stations in operation, while the surrounding area is ideal for biking and touring.

Obviously, accommodation, meals and logistics play a much bigger role in the longer bicycle tours, which have already been undertaken in an ad hoc fashion by Project Rwanda. These two-, three- or four-day tours can be adjusted and geared toward coffee-trail biking and tours of the tea plantations. But the preparations for this are much more profound and detailed, where the types of groups who undertake tours of this nature are more likely to be limited to a very specific type of adventure or even sporting traveller. Nevertheless, all tours can be designed to cater for the particular needs and capabilities of each tour group.

For now, the coffee-trail biking tours can utilise existing resources and established tourism facilities to implement such an initiative immediately. There are people and organisations willing to support and conduct such tours – and assist in any way possible – and the tours can easily be promoted along with any other tourist initiatives in the country, especially the gorilla tours. Coffee biking complements existing tourism activities in Rwanda and can even be included in a two-component package for tourists already travelling to Ruhengeri to see the gorillas or to the Nyungwe Forest to see the chimpanzees. After the gorilla or chimpanzee experience, the package would include a biking tour of a coffee plantation and its washing stations for a day or two nearby.

What are the benefits?

Rwandan tourism and the coffee sector are the most obvious benefactors of this extra dimension of tourism in the country. It will generate new revenue and bring in more tourist receipts than before. Coffee-trail biking and coffee tours will keep existing visitors in the country for longer by providing them with additional activities besides the gorilla experience, thus ensuring that they stay in the country for an extra three or four days – and thus making the long (and relatively difficult) trip to Rwanda that much more worthwhile.

Coffee-trail biking provides an alternative activity and thus opens Rwandan tourism to a new market. It provides something for the adventure travellers and those interested in the rural outdoors. Importantly, it also taps the large and growing expatriate community based in Rwanda, providing them with an easy and relatively cheap activity for the day or weekend. Much of the ex-pat community in Rwanda are low-earning young interns looking for activities that will take them out of the city, making a biking experience in coffee country that much more appealing, accessible and feasible to them.

The other benefactors of coffee-trail biking are the coffee producers themselves. Such an exercise promotes Rwandan coffee along with its high quality and somewhat unique production process of small-scale farming, rural-based washing stations and the co-operatives that are improving Rwandan coffee’s competitiveness vis-à-vis other producing countries.

Each trail will promote a particular brand of coffee. As suggested before, the Maraba trail will help promote Maraba coffee and co-operatives near Butare by facilitating visits to the washing stations and providing tourists with the opportunity to meet the farmers and do a tasting – thus bringing them closer and exposing them to the product in a unique and memorable way. The coffee trails will be well advertised and signposted, and will establish Maraba as a visitors’ destination while promoting the premium coffee brand in the process.

Finally, a small percentage of the revenue generated from the coffee biking trails and tours should be allocated directly to the farmers themselves and perhaps the rural community visited.⁸ In this way, the farmers are directly part of the project and can see (and enjoy) immediate results, and thus have a real incentive to accommodate visitors and ensure that their experience is a good one.

Positive change and economic growth is mostly about good policy, setting priorities and making things happen. To grow the economy, it is imperative to find the reasons to get more people to visit Rwanda and to get them to and around the country cheaper and easier. Critically, this demands having more frequency to air traffic; and it requires offering a variety of tourism products beyond gorillas.