Baho Coffee was founded by Emmanuel Rusatira (or «Emma»). Emma explains the name as follows: «‹Baho› means ‹be strong› or ‹don't give up›. It is the kind of thing you say to friends when they tell you about their misfortunes or problems, when they want to give up. You hug them and say: ‹Baho!› You give them comfort.»

He adds: «This is what I aim to achieve with my company and the coffees we produce: to give comfort to the ones who drink it and the ones who grow it. Coffee's journey is long and it experiences many difficulties: It is hit by the weather, by insects, perhaps bad management, then you pick it, heat if with fire... If you could ask coffee to tell you about its journey, you'd cry. I believe coffee can, in fact, speak and for me, it says something like: ‹Baho!›»

Instead of buying coffee from cooperatives, he deals with smallholder farmers directly. The smallholders of Fugi CWS («Central Washing Station») along the Akanyaru border between Rwanda and Burundi manage their coffee trees in one of the hilliest areas of the country. The area is dominated by agriculture and coffee makes up a big part of it.

Emma and his team experiment with different processing methods a lot to get as much flavor out of the coffee as possible, which ultimately also results in a higher selling price. The philosophy at Baho is that the farmers are the bosses. Emma says that his business relies on the farmers' happiness. He wants to help change their lives, just like he changed his own. For this reason, he does not merely buy their coffee, but he works with them very closely, providing access to agronomic education, fertilizer, seedlings, or he helps them evaluate the condition of their soil and trees. Baho Coffee also covers the farmers' social insurance and provides a second payment at the end of the crop. Working with Baho allows the farmers to sell their coffee at higher prices than they are usually able to when selling to cooperatives.

This is not the first coffee we have purchased from Baho Coffee. They have provided us with Intsinzi and Amahoro before, both coffees with quite intense fermented notes. Fugi, too, comes with some fermented, ripe-fruit notes, although these are a bit more subtle, perhaps slightly more elegant, in this coffee. It is full and round with a lot of sweetness and tastes slightly tropical with notes of all sorts of red and dark berries and red grapes.