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Burundi Seeks to Become Top Coffee Producer in Africa

Burundi Seeks to Become Top Coffee Producer in Africa

Though the coffee industry is picking up in Burundi, one of Africa’s poorest countries, the coffee job market doesn’t provide enough money for workers and their families, Al Jazeera reported. Tasks like picking out bad coffee beans, earns workers less than one dollar per day.

Pickers who work on farms fear that shifts in politics — caused by the upcoming election — may also change the coffee jobs landscape. According to Aljazeera, the industry can be considered a safe bet because collectively with tea, coffee makes up 80 percent of the country’s exports. Insiders say what’s most important is the quality.

“In Burundi we have some of the best coffee in the world, because of the soil we have and because of the environment that we have,” Wege Olivier of Webcore Coffee Company told Al Jazeera.

“We have to make sure that the quality is really there each year. People come to Burundi to search for the quality. They’re not coming to search for quantity.”