{Non-profit capital fund, Acumen has made a $1.2 million investment in Rwanda based speciality coffee producer KZ Noir, a subsidiary of private equity firm Kaizen Venture Partners.}<\/p>\n
\u201cThis investment presents a great opportunity to impact the livelihoods of small scale coffee farmers in Rwanda, while building a scalable and financially sustainable company\u201d said Duncan Onyango, East Africa Director, Acumen.<\/p>\n
The convertible debt investment marks Acumen\u2019s initial investment in Rwanda and first in the coffee sector, a key contributor to the Rwandan economy and an important source of employment.<\/p>\n
Acumen\u2019s investment will further strengthen the company\u2019s capacity to expand through value added projects, KZ Noir\u2019s MD, Gilbert Gatali said.<\/p>\n
Speaking for the coffee producer\u2019s parent company, Ngozi Dozie, a Director at Kaizen Venture Partners added: \u201cOur goal is to become the leading integrated coffee company in Rwanda, with expertise across the value chain, and Acumen\u2019s investment represents a significant step in that direction.\u201d<\/p>\n
KZ Noir is a fully-integrated Rwandan specialty coffee company that owns and operates eight coffee washing stations across three subsidiary companies, Caferwa, Karengera Coffee and Socor.<\/p>\n
It sources its coffee from over 10,000 smallholder coffee farmers in Rwanda and markets its coffee across the globe, selling to blue chip buyers such as Starbucks, Sustainable Harvest, Mercanta, Stumptown and Taylor of Harrogate.<\/p>\n
ventures-africa.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Non-profit capital fund, Acumen has made a $1.2 million investment in Rwanda based speciality coffee producer KZ Noir, a subsidiary of private equity firm Kaizen Venture Partners.} \u201cThis investment presents a great opportunity to impact the livelihoods of small scale coffee farmers in Rwanda, while building a scalable and financially sustainable company\u201d said Duncan Onyango, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2000049933,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[75],"byline":[334],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-12106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-homenews","byline-igihe-reporter"],"bylines":[{"id":334,"name":"IGIHE Reporter","slug":"igihe-reporter","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":334,"name":"IGIHE Reporter","slug":"igihe-reporter","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":{"id":2000049933,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton12106.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton12106.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton12106.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton12106.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton12106.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton12106.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12106\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000049933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12106"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=12106"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=12106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}