Coffee Rebound Perking up Rwanda’s Economy

In the aftermath of Rwanda's 1994 genocide, this tiny hill nation's coffee industry also lingered near death. World prices for the country's unremarkable beans had bottomed out. Thousands of coffee farmers were dead. Across Rwanda's terraced green hills, century-old coffee plantations sat abandoned or were being leveled to replant bananas.

"When we got here, the price was so bad people were pulling coffee out of their fields," recalled Tim Schilling, a Texas A&M University agronomist.

Today, however, Rwanda's languishing coffee industry has reversed its tailspin so convincingly that its once pedestrian beans are now considered some of the tastiest in the world. Read More...