James Uwizeyimana

James Uwizeyimana is 40 years old, married with 4 children. The children’s ages range from 8, 6, 4 and 2 years old. The elder children go to primary school. This family grows different crops like cassava, potatoes, cabbage, spinach, tomatoes, and beans, sweet potatoes for both home consumption and to sell in the near by market. They basically carry out subsistence farming. He sells about 600 kilograms of cassava tubes to the wholesalers from Kigali. Each kg at 150 Frws.

This family operates a business of selling banana juice and sorghum beer in the local market and has opened up a shop like a small bar joint which they rent 30,000 Frws (approx USD 60) per month in the near center where they sell these drinks to the locals in the area. When the husband goes to the market, the wife stays back operating the bar. The juice and the sorghum beer is a commonly drunk during the wedding ceremonies in the area which happens every Saturday. He sells 300 liters of both juice and banana beer every week at 200 Frws (approx. USD 0.4) per liter. James gets up at 5 am in the morning, packs his juice and sorghum beer on his old a local Chinese bicycle he bought from the profits he earned.

James grows 400 trees of coffee and harvests about 400kgs of cherries which he carries on his old Chinese bicycle to the washing station before 3 pm in the evening to make sure that his coffee quality is always the best. When he was 10 years old, his father grew coffee that helped him to get school fees for James who completed primary six. When he was 15 years old, his father decided to give him a piece of land as his heritage and to help him start a life on his own. James started growing coffee on his land. By the time he got married in 1992, he already had 100 coffee trees to support his family. Out of coffee, he has been able to buy three pigs which will be producing piglets at the end of this year. As a business man, he projects to sell over 30 piglets at the end of year at 10,000 Frws (approx USD 20) each which will be used to buy more land to grow more trees of coffee. The pigs and his cow provide manure for his coffee plantation and his gardens.

Need of a cargo bike/coffee bike:

This coffee farmer stressed the need for a cargo bicycle which he would use to transport his produce to untapped markets in the region which a normal bicycle can’t transport because of the mountains in the area. Also, the cargo bicycle transports more weight than the normal bicycle. He would even charge people to ride them to Butare which is the main town in the southern province of the country.