ITURI, July 23, 2024 – Kavira Matsetse, a widow and mother of eight, inherited her coffee plantation in Biakato, northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Ituri province, nearly a decade ago. The area has been overridden by interethnic and religious tensions, conflicts over land resources, and violence fuelled by political and economic factors. DR Congo has some of the most fertile land in the world and has often been dubbed a “paradise for coffee” for its high-quality produce.
The conflict, which has spurred massive waves of displacements, has negatively affected the region’s agriculture, contributing to DRC losing almost 75 percent of its coffee production in 40 years. The conflict has also made it difficult to gauge the exact amount of coffee production happening in eastern DRC; and challenges in the region continue to embitter farmers towards growing coffee.
For women, who make up 80 percent of the labour force in coffee farms as the fighting draws men to the front lines, working on farms amid conflict means multiplied dangers and challenges, with little support. In Ituri’s communities, where men are traditionally the breadwinners, earning money to support her family after her husband died was uncharted territory for widowed Matsetse.
Three years later, that help came in the form of a cooperative of local coffee growers called the Association Solidarite des Cooperations pour le Developpement et la Vulgarisation Agricole [SOCODEVA]. The association, formed in 2014, had begun registering coffee growers, raising awareness, and bringing them together. With the help of SOCODEVA, Matsetse was able to buy a new plot of land and build a house of her own.
SOCODEVA also has coffee nurseries where they grow coffee seedlings, which are then distributed to coffee growers for free. The association is funded by membership fees and the profit margin on group sales, a system that brings together large quantities of coffee from different farmers to sell to buyers. This allows the coffee buyer to avoid the expense of going to each small farmer independently to buy a small amount of coffee, while increasing farmers’ chances of selling their crops. A profit margin is added to the price of coffee to further empower the growers financially.
With their support and advice, Matsetse was able to ramp up not only the amount of coffee she grows to up to 2.1 tonnes but also the quality of her coffee.
SOCODEVA, a group of 3,000 coffee farmers in Ituri, has been working to support widowed and destitute women in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo [DRC]. The conflict in eastern DRC has escalated recently, with attacks by government forces and over 120 armed militias. This has affected farmers’ ability to access their fields and harvest enough coffee to sell to the market, hitting them financially. Poverty is also rampant in villages in the region.
SOCODEVA has enabled a system where members lend one another a helping hand when times are tough. As part of its endeavours, the association brings farmers together in groups of 25 people, creating a mutual aid system between the members. Group members make contributions, typically 2,000 Congolese francs (less than $1), which are then held in a common fund to help members who need financial assistance. This money is used to pay bills in the context of solidarity when a member is sick or in need.
On the coffee farms, the association also incentivises farmers who succeed in producing a tonne or more of coffee per season. In return, they get materials that help them in the field, including hoes, tarpaulins, machetes, and watering cans worth up to US$ 25. Such incentives encouraged Francoise Mbambu Desi, a 56-year-old mother of four, to take on the challenges of coffee growing, with the help of the cooperatives.
However, even with the initiatives, the support cooperatives provide falls short of addressing bigger challenges brought about by the years-long conflict. The conflict has affected coffee prices and led to a significant increase in the smuggling of coffee outside DRC, an exploitative practice that deprives local producers, predominantly women whose families have been affected by the conflict, of vital income.
Several local coffee sellers claim that about 10,000 tonnes of coffee in the territories of Mahagi and Djugu in Ituri province are fraudulently smuggled out of DRC to neighbouring Uganda and Rwanda annually. Several farmers prefer to deal with smugglers to sell raw products to be smuggled to avoid high taxes levied by the state.
Amid the challenges, many coffee growers in Ituri have considered the obvious alternative – farming cacao instead. Cacao cultivation poses a significant risk to the survival of coffee farming, despite coffee having been the dominant crop for many years. Cacao differs from coffee in the price on the market, it is double, or even triple the price of coffee.
Matsetse is also considering an alternative course, as cacao cultivation is gaining popularity and there is desperation. If these conditions persist, she might give up, as sometimes the coffee seedling dries up, and cacao has become a promising crop given its market value.
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