Rwandan Coffee--Smooth taste with a good kick, helping the poor.

Tomorrow I will buy a couple  pounds of Rwandan Coffee.  When I first went to Rwanda to manage an economic assessment of US government investments I took the opportunity to go to the farmer cooperative in Maraba that served as the pilot activity for organizing poor, small coffee farmers into cooperatives and helpling them improve their coffee quality.  And of course we had coffee.  I'm not normally a coffee snob, but Rwandan coffee is smooth, with an increasingly  complex palate over the years, and it packs a nice kick! It still remains my coffee of choice.  Fortunately I can get it if I look, from the trendy Bourbon Coffee in DC where I will go tomorrow and also in Cambridge MA where I will be in a couple weeks, to my hometown  roaster Paramount Coffee in Lansing Michigan!  Best of all, the economic analysis showed that by improving their coffee quality and using cooperatives to link with international buyers, coffee growers and their families were able to climb out of poverty.  Over 80,000 Rwandans escaped the poverty trap  because everyone likes  a  better cup of coffee!