By Allison Aubrey
November 07, 2012 1:37 PM
 |
These
four women are at the forefront of change,
empowering other women in the coffee
industry
(clockwise from top left): Angele Ciza, Fatima Aziz Faraji,
Immy
Kamarade and Mbula Musau.
Photo: Karen Castillo Farfán/NPR
|
If you're a coffee
drinker, chances are the cup of java you drank this morning was made from beans
that were produced or harvested by women. Women's handprints can be found at
every point in coffee production.
In fact, on
family-owned coffee farms in Africa, about 70 percent of maintenance and
harvesting work is done by women, according to an analysis by
the International Trade Centre, but only rarely do women own the land or have
financial control.
The International
Women's Coffee Alliance (IWCA) is trying to change that by
giving them access to training and networking, and the opportunity to develop
new trade relationships.
We sat down recently
with four African women on the cusp of change who were on a trip to Washington,
D.C., sponsored jointly by the IWCA and the International Trade Centre's Women
in Coffee Project. Here are their stories, in brief.
Angele Ciza of Burundi
is ahead of her time; she owns the land she farms on. Her 10-hectare (24.7
acre) coffee plantation in the northern part of the country has some 26,000
trees producing Arabica coffee, and she's also purchased seven washing stations
(part of the coffee processing procedure). She's employing about 100 women, and
she also helps pay school fees for the children of her employees.
"We work very,
very hard," says Ciza. Her vision for lifting more people out of poverty
in her region is clear. "If you want to develop Burundi, you develop the
women," she says.
Fatima Aziz Faraji
agrees. She manages a family coffee farm called Finca Estate in Tanzania. She's
pushed for a larger voice for women by filling the seats on coffee oversight
boards traditionally reserved for men. For instance, she's getting ready to
begin a stint on the Tanzanian Coffee Board, and she's a co-director of the
Tanzania Coffee Research Institute.
So what is the IWCA's
alliance doing for women in her country? She explains the IWCA is bringing
women together who previously had no access to each other, or the outside
world.
"The ones [women]
who are doing well can help" the ones who are just getting started, she
explains. "Some women are resistant because of their culture."
They're not used to having financial control, Faraji explains. They need
mentors — or "sisters," as she describes other women in coffee — to
learn from.
When Immy Kamarade
wanted to spend more time with her kids (sound familiar, working moms?), she
knew she had to learn a new trade. She quit her job in the medical field and
started a coffee business. She says she's now working as hard as ever, but it's
more on her own terms. She's established a cooperative of 100 women who are
producing and processing coffee in her home country of Rwanda.
"It's a new day
for Rwanda," she says. As we've reported before, Rwanda is finding that
producing premium coffee pays.
Women there never had
access to education or rights to land ownership, but "today a woman owns
land like her husband and signs on the land title, and a woman has a right to
open a [banking] account."
Kamarade says the IWCA
is helping to form connections with the people who are actually buying and
consuming her coffee in the U.S. and elsewhere. And through these
relationships, "we'll be able to access better markets now," she
says.
Mbula Musau of Kenya
holds one of the most coveted titles in the coffee industry: certified
Q-grader. This means buyers know that she knows her stuff when it comes to
grading the quality of a coffee bean. And she's also served as a sensory judge
at the World Barista Championship competition.
She now works on the
trade and marketing side of the industry, but as a "sister of
coffee," as she calls herself, she wants to help empower women involved at
all levels of coffee production in her country. "The majority of labor is
women," Musua explains. By connecting them with women around the world,
"it creates hope." And, she hopes, opportunities, too.