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TruStory 

Horamama Coffee Dry Mill from Burundi

The company

Burundian coffee exporter COCOCA borrowed 100,000 USD from Truvalu in 2016 to acquire a coffee dry mill hulling plant. This investment concerned a co-investment with Kampani, a Brussels-based social impact investment fund. Five years down the road the loan has entirely been repaid and Truvalu is proud to exit this investment with the organization healthier and more sustainable than when Truvalu entered the investment.

The entrepreneur

Truvalu supports promising agribusinesses in a hands-on way, through a tailor-made set of investments and business development services.

For the coffee cooperative movement in Burundi, Truvalu made the acquisition of an existing coffee dry mill possible via an asset deal. The new company was named Horamama Coffee Dry Mill and is located in Ntarambo, in the Northern part of Burundi (area of Kayanza/Ngozi). The owner of Horamama is the Fairtrade certified Burundian coffee exporter COCOCA, a union of smallholder cooperatives.

Horamama hulls and stores the cooperative’s coffee beans – an activity which used to be outsourced to third parties. Hulling is the last link in the value chain before export and transforms parchment coffee into green coffee. All earlier steps in the process i.e. the production itself and the transformation from cherries into parchment coffee are carried out by the base cooperatives in their own washing stations. The umbrella organization, COCOCA, is responsible for the coordination and commercialization.

Anesie is a Burundi coffee farmer and a widow with 11 children. Using the income from the 600 coffee trees on her coffee farm, she has been able to keep her children in school and to help them achieve a better life than she has lived. It is this hope for a better future for her children that encourages and sustains Anesie on her coffee farm.

Impact

The impact of the investment is much more than adding buildings and equipment to the balance sheet. It is seeing the lives of individual coffee farmers improved economically, their children able to go to school, and healthier families.

Truvalu and Kampani are proud to have contributed to the growth of COCOCA and to the improvement in the lives of thousands of smallholder coffee farmers.

The investment contributes to the creation of local jobs, the professionalization of the company and the concrete sale of coffee. It contributed to SDG 8 and SDG 12.

“Thanks to this investment, COCOCA has greatly strengthened its position in the market, hereby reducing the vulnerability of its almost 30.000 members. They can take control of their own lives in ways they did not dream possible only a few years ago.“ – Dan Brose (Truvalu representative inside Horamama)

Co-entrepreneurship

The company was in need of capital to acquire a coffee dry mill. Truvalu provided a solution in terms of :

  • a co-investment in the form of a subordinated debt-agreement over five years with a two-year grace period, and
  • having a board seat, providing invaluable support and assistance to the leadership to COCOCA and Horamama.

This support has helped the board to be more effective in its governance, to raise additional capital for this and other investments, to manage difficult transitions, and face internal and external challenges.