Our mission? To bring sustainable prosperity to the people of Burundi and sensory delight to all who consume our coffees.
Our purpose? To provide sustainable growth and efficiency to Burundi’s coffee sector through easy access to reliable and up-to-date information that enables all stakeholders in the sector to do their jobs more effectively, make better planning and investment decisions, and form an operational community of practice around their shared interests in producing and moving high quality coffee into the marketplace.
For whom, by whom? Users of and contributors to the Café du Burundi Data Base and Knowledge Network constitute the large and diverse community of producers, professionals and consumers who share a passion for sustainable prosperity through the production and marketing of fine coffees from Burundi. Through this platform:
- Producers are educated in the best coffee growing practices based on locally adapted research and extension training materials and they are empowered through support from local producer organizations.
- Farmer cooperatives and enterprises acquire skills in the application of sustainable technologies and quality control in their washing stations and dry mills; they are able to share their stories and promote the uniqueness of their coffees.
- Coffee buyers and roasters worldwide learn about the vast array of Burundi coffees and they build direct sales relationships with producers and local exporters.
- InterCafé Burundi is equipped with a tool for better supporting coffee production, processing, marketing/promotion and opportunities for sustainable coffee certification.
- ARFIC and the Ministry of Environment make available to all new developments in coffee policy, regulatory requirements and quality control issues and procedures.
- Consumers help to hold the community together through their knowledge of Burundi coffee and their support in the marketplace; they also provide their feedback to producers, roasters and especially to other coffee-loving consumers.
How? The Café du Burundi platform is an Open Educational Resource (OER) with online accessibility designed to serve the diverse information needs of all stakeholders and potential users, from Burundi coffee producers to Burundi coffee consumers. The platform is sponsored and maintained by InterCafé, Burundi’s inter-professional coffee trade association, with assistance from the Burundi Agribusiness Program (BAP) a multi-year initiative of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) with implementation partners Development Alternatives Incorporated (DAI) and Michigan State University (MSU). As an open educational resource, Café du Burundi is largely unrestricted in its accessibility and is available to all free of charge, though some pages do require a simple registration. As an OER we also welcome contributions from users in many different domains. These include inputs from managers of producer groups and coffee washing stations who are invited to upload information about their cooperatives and enterprises; from roasters of Burundi coffee and how it can be purchased locally and online; from scientists and development professionals who wish to make their work available for purposes of improving the performance of the Burundi coffee value chain through increased productivity, efficiency, sustainability, equity and coffee quality; and from consumers who are invited to share their all-important feedback to producers, roasters and other potential consumers.
A Decision Support System. The Burundi Coffee Data Base and Knowledge Network combines critical elements found in many decision support systems in that it is: 1) data-driven, emphasizing access to and manipulation of a time series and other data about the coffee sector (internal to Burundi and external on global markets); 2) document-driven in its ability to manage, retrieve, and manipulate documents in variety of formats (Word, Excel, PDF, PPT etc.); 3) knowledge-driven in that it provides specialized problem solving information such as best coffee practices, technologies, tools and regulations; 4) model-driven in ways that enable learning from successful experiences, or “models” (in the sense of conceptual guides, as opposed to the more data-intensive simulation models that often characterize DSSs of this type); and 5) communication-driven in that it is designed to provide information that enables communications between producers and buyers and other users and provide a platform for blogs and other interactive forms of communication.
