Rwanda is brewing a new strategy for its tea sector, supported by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The strategy prioritizes premium-quality tea production, with the aim of boosting output and improving the livelihoods of smallholder farmers facing growing challenges from the climate crisis, rising fertilizer costs, and competition from regional markets.

Tea is Rwanda’s second-largest agricultural export product, after coffee. In recent years, the sector has recorded steady growth, with more than 100 000 people involved in the value chain.

Bertride Nyiranzigiye, 65, owns a hectare of a tea plantation in a hilly area of the Nyaruguru district in southern Rwanda. She sells her tea leaves, which she picks daily with seven workers she employs, to a local factory that processes the freshly picked green leaves into high-quality black Crush, Tear, and Curl (CTC) tea.

Formerly a subsistence farmer growing cassava and maize, Bertride entered the tea business in 2018 and became an employer. She was trained by agronomists from the government-supported Services Company Outgrowers Nyaruguru (SCON), which runs field schools to teach farmers how to grow and maintain plantations, ensuring high-quality output by learning to recognise and pick only the top, tender leaves and avoid the coarse or mature ones.

SOUNDBITE (Kinyarwanda), Bertride Nyiranzigiye, tea farmer: “What makes Rwandan tea good is that we take care of the plantations. We only harvest the best quality. We’re trained by the agronomists about the best practices for tea farming, so now we know how to harvest the best quality.”

Historically, tea cultivation in Rwanda began in the 1950s with small pilot plots. It expanded during the 1960s and 1970s under state-led agricultural programmes, but it remained modest in size, measuring some 12 500 ha in 1994. The area increased after structural reforms in the post-civil war period, reaching more than 35 000 hectares in 2025.

Today, agriculture is a cornerstone of Rwanda’s economy, employing approximately two-thirds of the population and contributing around 27 percent of national GDP. The National Agriculture Export Development Board (NAEB) of Rwanda spearheads all agricultural export coordination, policy implementation processes, and quality assurance.

Tea production is vertically integrated and largely oriented toward export markets, with annual foreign sales of around USD 110 million last year. The value chain comprises producers and processors. Smallholders and estates cultivate the green leaves that nineteen factories in Rwanda convert into black CTC and orthodox, as well as green teas, sold internationally. In recent years, Rwanda has earned several international tea competitions recognising the quality of its teas.

The FAO’s Markets and Trade Division has undertaken an analysis of Rwanda’s tea value chain. The analysis highlights its role as a key socio-economic pillar and identifying areas for improvement such as coordination, market information, and logistics, while recommending enhanced regional integration, improved market access, and better policy alignment to strengthen intra-African tea trade.

FAO is also supporting the government to develop Rwanda’s first dedicated tea sector strategy through the Monitoring and Analysing Food and Agricultural Policies (MAFAP) programme. This initiative supports Rwanda to prioritize, reform and implement policies on tea. The key objectives are to increase productivity and diversify tea products and value, prioritising premium-quality production over volume.

Across the value chain, the “standardised processing methods” of tea ensure high quality, explains Sandrine Urujeni, Chief Operations Officer at NAEB.

SOUNDBITE (English), Sandrine Urujeni, Chief Operations Officer at National Agriculture Export Development Board of Rwanda (NAEB): “[Tea in Rwanda] It’s grown on large scale, but it requires to handpick it, to selectively pick it, to make sure that farmers select good leaves, and also going to the factories, making sure that we are processing it well. We have standardised processing methods. All these combinations make sure that we make the tea from Rwanda a good one.”

More than two-thirds of Rwanda’s tea exports are sold through the Mombasa Tea Auction in Mombasa, Kenya. To access this market, Rwandan tea travels around 1 200 km by road, since the country is landlocked. This creates several challenges for tea exporters, including long transit times, potential losses, and high operational costs related to transport, storage facilities, and personnel.

These factors, along with a topography dominated by highlands that has earned the country the name “Land of A Thousand Hills,” have led the Rwandan government to focus on “niche” markets that value quality over production, explains Mohamed, Aw-Dahir, FAO Representative in the country.

SOUNDBITE (English), Mohamed, Aw-Dahir, FAO Representative in Rwanda: “Rwanda is focusing on quality, on the standards, and also on the access to the best market. So that is the niche because of the production, because of the topography, because of the number of farmers involved, because of the landlocked situation of the country. Because of all these [factors], the focus of the government, which we [FAO] understand, is to focus on the quality, and that is the best niche for the country.”

Rwanda aims to further promote the direct sale of tea and to boost premium tea exports, which provide better returns to Rwandan producers and processors. FAO is advancing the tea value chain investments under the Hand-in-Hand Initiative, including tea plantation expansion, tea research, and the improvement of feeder roads to strengthen the tea value chain.

Reflecting on the hard work behind a cup of tea, Bertride Nyiranzigiye says she is satisfied with the income generated by the sales of her handpicked green leaves. Despite the long hours of harvesting, tea has improved her livelihood.

SOUNDBITE (Kinyarwanda), Bertride Nyiranzigiye, tea farmer: “After I planted tea, my life changed. Now I can pay my health insurance on time, I can pay the school fees for my children. My household has also improved. I bought a cow, and now I drink milk. My life has really improved after I start farming tea.”

Another advantage of tea production is that it can sustain the livelihoods of several generations of farmers within one family. Tea bushes take 4 to 6 years to mature before they can be harvested; afterwards, productivity increases.

The full yield potential is reached at 20-40 years, allowing the sons or even the grandsons of today’s new plantations to have a continued return on investment, explains Vincent Hategekimana, General Manager of Services Company Outgrowers Nyaruguru Ltd (SCON).

SOUNDBITE (English), Vincent Hategekimana, General Manager of Services Company Outgrowers Nyaruguru Ltd (SCON): “Tea is a perennial crop. Normally, the parents of today, they are growing it, but the group benefiting [from the income generated from production] is that of their sons or children. So it’s a long time gaining, and it’s a chain from parents to children up to even grandchildren.”

Over 83 percent of Rwanda’s agricultural production consists of smallholder farmers.

Credit: FAO