We’re Axel and Gatete, two Rwandans building imizi around a simple belief: the people who grow our coffee deserve to share more fully in its value. We have seen how much work coffee demands from local farmers—and how difficult it can be for that effort to translate into a better livelihood. We want to help change that by building a coffee brand that takes quality seriously, treats its sourcing relationships with respect and brings more of Rwanda’s coffee story to the people who drink it.

We’re starting with coffee from our own farm and other Rwandan farmers. We’ll begin here at home, learn from our customers, and grow step by step—from carefully selected beans and packaged coffee to the possibility of imizi coffee shops and, one day, customers around the world. imizi is a beginning: rooted in where we come from, and built for what coffee can become.