Congolese Women in Coffee-Cocoa Initiative: The launch of a national platform to foster an inclusive coffee value chain and women economic empowerment

 Congolese Women in Coffee-Cocoa Initiative: The launch of a national platform to foster an inclusive coffee value chain and women economic empowerment

(published in the African Fine Coffee Review Magazine, Jan.-Mar.2018, Issue)

by

Julie K. Kamungele and Amani Lwanzo

Last year will be remembered as a watershed moment for women in the Congolese coffee sector.  In 2017, women working in the coffee and cocoa value-chain in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) formed the DRC Women in Coffee-Cocoa Initiative, more commonly known by its French acronym, IFCCA (Initiative des femmes dans le Café-Cacao). It is a platform that empowers Congolese women involved in the coffee-cocoa value chain through entrepreneurship and female leadership that helps them build their skills and strengthen their position in these growing markets, in general, and strengthens their household income, in particular.

Although still young, this women’s platform has already been warmly welcomed as an opportunity to improve women’s role in the coffee sector. Jennifer Peterson, the chief of party of the USAID-funded Feed the Future DRC strengthening value chains activity, said IFCCA would, “increase women’s voice as well as their access to and control over the productive resources required to produce, transform and market more specialty coffee.”  Her project supports IFCCA because they believe empowering women to play a greater role in decision-making in the coffee and cocoa sectors helps recognize the important role women already play in those sectors in Eastern Congo and improves the sector.

The idea to form such an organization had been gestating for some time but gained momentum during the 15^th African Fine Coffee Conference and Exhibition in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in February 2017.  Then in May 2017, the women came together during the third edition of the Saveur du Kivu (SduK) event with the support of ELAN RDC in Bukavu, DRC.  SduK is a public and private sector annual collaborative capacity-building event aimed at fostering the prosperous development of the specialty coffee industry in DRC.  SduK objectives include promoting gender equity and women’s leadership within the Congolese specialty coffee industry.

IFCCA provides a national framework for consultation, exchange, and cooperation.  Members of IFCCA represent women stakeholders working across the Congolese DRC coffee and cocoa value chain. Members include over 10,000 female smallholder farmers organized in cooperative organizations, coffee exporters, extension workers, NGO representatives, and government officials.  IFCCA members span the entire DRC but most members are from the North and South Kivu provinces where all the Congolese specialty coffee is currently produced.

IFCCA also seeks to increase women’s access to extension services, business management and leadership skills in order to foster productivity, entrepreneurship and enable members to effectively take part in decision making.  IFCCA seeks to help develop business management skills for women, such as identifying and capturing business opportunities, effective cooperation, marketing, networking, accounting, access to information technology to improve their economic standing and, therefore, increase their social standing.

IFCCA is helping position women in the higher value-added activities, such as export markets and transactions where money changes hands and where women have been largely absent.  In fact, women in Africa are primarily small-scale farmers and constitute over 50 percent of the total agricultural labor force in sub-Saharan Africa (AfDB, 2015). The trends in sub-Saharan Africa mirror the situation in the DRC agriculture sector.  Congolese women represent approximately 60 percent of the entire labor force and 73 percent of farmers.^[1]

In the coffee sector, Congolese women are mainly concentrated in production.  Congolese households rely on women as caregivers as well as farmers and food producers along the agricultural value chain.  Despite this dual role, Congolese women in agriculture and rural areas have less access to productive resources and less control over benefits accruing from their labor.  They continue to face gender-based constraints that limit their ability to access agricultural information and opportunities.

Many projects have already been tried to respond to the challenges faced by women in the agriculture and coffee sector.  Most of these projects, however, are focused primarily on increasing production.  IFCCA, on the other hand, brings women together from different levels of the coffee value chain to empower one another and gain more skills.  IFCCA aims to increase production, improve livelihoods and increase household incomes.  It is also a grassroots movement that has had the buy-in from the women from the start.

To formalize the IFCCA platform, a general assembly was organized in the North Kivu provincial capital of Goma from October 16 to 17, 2017 with the support of DFID-funded programs Essor and ELAN RDC, USAID-funded Feed the Future DRC Strengthening Value Chains Activity, Eastern Congo Initiative, Ets. TSONGO KASEREKA, and ASSECCAF (the DRC Coffee Exporters’ Association).  The general assembly had as objectives the validation of the IFCCA organizational governing legal documents and the election of the members of the IFCCA national and provincial leadership teams. An action plan covering the period from November 2017 to April 2018 was also adopted.

Essor is a DFID-funded program that works primarily to support government institutions with business environment reform. In this context, Essor is working to build capacity of the Congolese coffee board (Office National du Café) to reform the regulatory environment for the coffee sector, which is the DRC government institution in charge of overseeing the DRC coffee sector.  Creating inclusive value chains in the DR Congo requires policies and institutions which enable women engaged in subsistence farming to become professional farmers and create opportunities for women to be engaged in transformation, distribution and export activities along the coffee value chain.

ONC has begun to develop a strategy on how to support women working in the coffee value chain with support from Essor.

Tony Saiba, who works as one of the directors at ONC, sees huge potential partly because of the broad and diverse membership of IFCCA and urges the leaders to capitalize on the diverse skill-set and experiences of the members through collaboration and cross-learning.  Mr. Saiba also pointed out that the head of production at ONC in the town of Beni is a woman and member of IFCCA.  Moreover, there are a number of active ONC employee chapters within IFCCA that include women with technical skills in laboratory and production who can help build the capacity of IFCCA members.  The town of Beni in eastern Congo, which is now synonymous with violence and mass atrocities, is also one of the largest coffee producing regions of the DRC.  The Provincial Minister of Agriculture of South Kivu is also a member of IFCCA.  With such influential women among IFCCA members, this will bring about great benefits to promoting overall specialty coffee production, and contribute to the economic empowerment of all agricultural export crops.  In the long run, it also has the potential to foster peace in Eastern Congo by engaging one of the most marginalized groups in society and generating wealth that goes to the most vulnerable groups.

The National Secretariat for Capacity Building (Secretariat National pour le Renforcement des Capacités, SENAREC), a World Bank-funded government institution improving ownership in capacity-building activities, is currently exploring ways to support IFCCA members with leadership skills, access to technology and markets through its main regional and satellite centers found across the country equipped with video conference capacity, internet and meeting rooms.

IFCCA is looking forward to learning from and building partnerships with the AFCA Women in Coffee Initiative and the International Women's Coffee Alliance (IWCA) in order to empower women throughout the supply chain in DRC and connect IFCCA members to regional and international markets and buyers.

With so much accomplished in 2017 and so many other initiatives planned for the future, 2017 was, indeed, a watershed moment for women working in the Congolese coffee sector.

---

[1] FAO: http://www.fao.org/docrep/v8194e/v8194e01.htm#P13_469

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

Julie Kavira Kamungele 

Associate Export Director of Ets. TSONGO KASEREKA

National Representative of the DRC Women in Coffee and Cocoa Platform (IFCCA)

Mrs. Julie Kavira Kamungele  has over 5 years experience in local procurement and  trading of coffee. She is currently the Assistant Export Director of  Ets. TSONGO KASEREKA, a green coffee buying, processing and exporting company based in the town of Butembo, North Kivu Province, in eastern DR Congo. Julie is involved in various programs focused on the empowerment the  women working along the coffee value chain. 


She has represented  the Congolese women in coffee through the International Women in Coffee Alliance (DRC Chapter) and she has just been elected as the National Representative of the DRC Women in Cocoa and Coffee Platform (IFCCA).

Mrs. Kamungele holds a degree in accounting from “Ecole Professionnelle des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (EPHEC)” in Brussels, Belgium.

Lwanzo Amani 

Senior Private Sector Development Specialist

Lwanzo Amani is an independent private sector development consultant with over ten years of experience facilitating market access, promoting economic growth, and supporting community development.  Lwanzo most recently led the UK Aid-funded Essor Coffee Value Chain project, implemented by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) advisory services in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) (2016-2017).

Other clients include:

- The Food Security, Agriculture and Land section of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA);

-The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA)- joint international institution of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States and the European Union (EU);

- The Office of the Prime Minister of the DRC;

- The World Bank;

- Fresh Del Monte Produce; and

-  The Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC).  

An American citizen originally from Eastern DRC, Amani is fluent in French and English.  She received her Bachelors from Université Catholique de l’Afrique Centrale in Cameroon and her Masters from Duquesne University in the United States.