Muyinga

In Burundi's Muyinga region, roughly 280 farmers, including 50 women, tend their coffee with careful, deliberate handling. Farming here looks less like industry and more like gardening. Most smallholders cultivate just 25 to 30 trees, a scale that demands attention and care, work that is most often carried out by women.

At the heart of this community is one woman whose courage set the tone. Several years after losing her husband, she found her voice in a male-dominated industry, connected with JNP Coffee, and built a growing business. Today she brings young women along with her as she goes, passing forward what was once passed to her.

In Burundi, cultural norms shift slowly. Women still face barriers to property ownership and equal access to education. But through JNP Coffee, producers are paid directly for their work, becoming central participants in their local economies. Women typically reinvest the vast majority of that income back into their families and communities, and the impact compounds over time.

This coffee is also part of JNP's Dushime Premium Program, where dushime means "let's be thankful" in Kirundi. Since 2012, JNP has provided farmers a second payment at the end of each harvest season. By 2023, they had distributed over $500,000 through this initiative, a model so impactful that in 2024 the Burundian government began officially implementing a second payment to farmers nationwide.

Grown by a community of smallholders and processed at a women-owned wet mill, Muyinga is their story in every cup.