The global coffee market may not rely on Burundi, but Burundi relies on the world coffee market.

Burundi produces barely one-tenth of one percent of the world’s coffee exports, but coffee has an outsize impact on the fortunes of this tiny landlocked country in Central Africa.

There are more than 800,000 people in Burundi who grow coffee, and the coffee trade provides employment for more than half its population of 11 million people. Coffee is also the country’s leading source of foreign exchange by far, accounting for more than 70 percent of the country’s exports.

At Intelligentsia, we rely on Burundi for a steady supply of some of cleanest, sweetest coffees anywhere in the world. This is partly the result of the country’s near-exclusive dependence on Bourbon cultivars, and partly due to the meticulous selection that takes place at the washing stations that process coffee from Burundi’s coffee farmers and connect them to the world.

Over the past seven seasons, our search for the cleanest, sweetest coffees Burundi has to offer has led us six times to the village of Yandaro in Kayanza Province, where Greenco purchases and processes ripe cherry from thousands of smallholder farmers and partners with USAID to invest in them and their families.