Joint initiative with Bill Clinton assisting Rwanda by providing business capital and expertiseFrom Steve Bloomfield in Rushashi
HIGH up in the hills of northern Rwanda, past the rows of banana trees and cassava plants, where every inch of land is cultivated, lies Rwanda's new hope. In a country scarred by genocide, and now struggling to develop with a fast-growing population in a tiny patch of land, farmers here believe that a simple cup of coffee could transform Rwanda's reputation around the world.
And that's what Scotland's richest man is hoping, too. It is here in Rushashi, a small village two hours' drive north of Kigali, that the dreams of Sir Tom Hunter, the sports goods entrepreneur turned global philanthropist, are being put to the test.
In the two years since his charitable foundation joined forces with the one belonging to former US president Bill Clinton, millions of pounds have been invested in projects here in Rwanda and in Malawi.
The Clinton Hunter Development Initiative (CHDI) was launched in 2006 with a budget of $100 million. But it was not until earlier this year that the first major company got off the ground: Rwandan Farmers, the world's newest brand of coffee.
Coffee has been grown here for decades. The land is green and fertile and the rains are regular. According to industry experts, Rwanda has some of the best coffee in the world - but until recently farmers rarely got a good price for their product and Rwandan coffee was never marketed.
All that is now changing. Rwandan Farmers coffee is now on sale in British supermarkets and farmers such as Bernard Nshyongoza are making money. In his modest concrete home, halfway up a hill outside Rushashi, Bernard reaches up to a small shelf above his bed and pulls down a tin of Rwandan Farmers coffee. A picture of Bernard and his family, as well as a quote from the man himself, is plastered on the back.
He finds it strange that his picture is now in cupboards across Britain but he is proud that we are drinking his coffee. "It is a great thing that the world knows about our coffee," he says. CHDI pays a fair price for the coffee - and promises to return 16% of the retail value to the farmers once it has been sold.
CHDI is not pure charity, but nor is it an out-and-out business - it is more of a philanthropic business. The companies which are established are chosen because they think they will make money - but none of that profit goes to Hunter. Once their investment is recovered the money will be plunged into a new product. None of it will leave the country.
CHDI put in a large chunk of the initial investment for Rwandan Farmers, but that funding was matched by local investors and the company is run by a Rwandan management team.
It is a model that all the CHDI businesses follow. The foundation provides start-up capital, expertise and perhaps most importantly, confidence. "People think, well if these guys are investing in this, it must be good," says Graham Morgan, the country director.
The organisation also has the benefit of a fairly decent contacts list. Hunter and Clinton are the sort of men who know most people who matter. "They get on the phone to Stuart Rose at Marks & Spencer and say do you want to come and see this?'," says Morgan. "We can get people to come to Rwanda - and when they come they're impressed by what they see."
CHDI's biggest project will be launched within the next two weeks. Rwanda currently imports all its cooking oil, making the price and supply of a fairly key product dependent on outside influences. But soy beans, which produce cooking oil, grow well in Rwanda's fertile farmland.
A new company, with two-thirds of the finance coming from local investors, will open a soy bean factory in Rwanda which will process beans produced by 26,000 farmers across the country. The factory will also take the soy "cake" left over and turn it into animal feed. It is, Morgan hopes, a win-win situation: 26,000 farmers (and their families) will get a reliable income, new jobs will be created at the factory and all Rwandans will get cheaper cooking oil.
"This is a very young economy," says Morgan. "We're a catalyst for spawning new businesses."
Rwanda desperately needs new businesses. It is landlocked between some of Africa's most unstable countries. DR Congo, has been a constant source of unrest along the border, while Burundi to the south is still struggling to get through a decades-long rebellion.
Even Rwanda's more stable neighbours have had recent problems. Rwanda is heavily reliant on Kenya's archaic Mombasa port and the single-lane highway and single-track railway that lead from the port into the rest of East Africa.
During Kenya's post-election violence, trade ground to a virtual standstill. Angry young men in Nairobi's Kibera slum ripped up hundreds of yards of the railway track, closing down the entire route. Ad-hoc roadblocks and insecurity along the road between Naivasha and Eldoret made it almost impossible for goods to be delivered from Kenya into Uganda and further on into Rwanda.
Rwanda is also facing a population time-bomb. It is a tiny country with the highest population density of any country in Africa - and it is only going to get worse. The current population of nine million is expected to double by 2030.
The government is trying, somewhat cautiously, to prevent that happening. A "three-child family" policy has been introduced, although so far it is being encouraged rather than enforced.
Clinton's involvement in Rwanda is undoubtedly tied to his feeling of regret over the failure of the international community to prevent the 1994 genocide. He visited Kigali for the first time in 1998 to say sorry.
But his apology, though well received by many Rwandans, wasn't straightforward.
Clinton claimed he didn't know the extent of the tragedy until it was too late.
Yet as the writer Samantha Power powerfully demonstrated in her Pulitzer-prize winning book on genocide, A Problem From Hell, the Clinton administration led efforts to remove UN peacekeepers, blocked further UN reinforcements and even refused to use the word "genocide" despite receiving reports detailing the deaths of up to 8000 people a day.
Rwanda's president, Paul Kagame, has not been against using the world's collective guilt over the genocide to encourage investment.
The world's view of Rwanda is undoubtedly still viewed through the prism of genocide, but government officials now hope that people will start to see Rwanda in a different light.
Alex Kanyankole, director general of the national coffee board says: "Now we are saying you should know our country because of the quality of our coffee, because of our gorillas, because of our 1000 hills."
