FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

First Cup Of Excellence® Held In Africa:

Rwanda Cup Of Excellence ® Winner Awarded By President Kagame

Kigali, Rwanda. (August 31, 2008) Rwandan President Paul Kagame personally awarded the top two winners of the first Rwandan Cup of Excellence® competition during a ceremony packed with coffee farmers, industry representatives, ambassadors and state dignitaries. All had gathered in Kigali, Rwanda to celebrate the 24 winners of the world’s top coffee competition. The top two coffees in the competition both scored more than 90 points each during the 3-week-long competition process and were awarded with the extra presidential recognition. During his congratulatory remarks, the popular president praised all of the winning farmers in addition to the advancements of the coffee sector, and challenged the attendees to work together for transparency and quality.

The world’s most rigorous international competition for high quality coffee, Cup of Excellence, has been held in 8 other countries in Central and South America, but Rwanda is the first country in Africa to hold the prestigious event.

“We are excited to be able to bring this program to the African continent and especially pleased that the Rwandan coffee sector was so willing to recognize the quality of even the smallest of farmers, some of whom only had a handful of coffee trees,” indicated Susie Spindler Executive Director of The Alliance for Coffee Excellence, which manages the program world wide.

Over 200 entries from washing stations and cooperatives representing thousands of the country’s hopeful small farmers were screened down to the top 24 coffees by both a national jury and then an international jury. In a process reflective of the Olympics, each coffee was required to receive a score of over 84 in each cupping session in order to move to the next round. The final top ten underwent additional scrutiny to select the first place winner.

The Buremera MIG Washing Station, located in the south Huye area, won the first place award with a score of over 92 points. This washing station also submitted two additional award winning lots including third place. Second place was awarded to a lot from the Kakco- Rulindo Washing Station in the North Rulindo District. Both Bufcoffee and the Horizon Coffee Washing Stations won multiple awards for their high quality coffee lot.

Rwanda has over 500,000 small farmers, none of which are of sufficient size to submit a large enough lot by themselves. Each of the average 15 bag winning lots represents multiple farms, with several of the lots exceeding 200 farmers. Each farmer has been identified and will be listed on the Cup of Excellence website www.cupofexcellence.org. Coffee exports amount to over 50% of the country’s export earnings making the Cup of Excellence program, with its premium auction results, a critical program for the development of the specialty coffee sector.

The winning coffees will be auctioned to the highest bidder during a worldwide internet auction on October 14, 2008. Each of the farmers listed on the winning lot will share in the premiums that are received during one of the most anticipated auction in the history of the Cup of Excellence program.

Since it’s beginnings in 1999, the Cup of Excellence® program has hosted programs in Brazil, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Colombia and now Rwanda. The Cup of Excellence program is managed by the non-profit Alliance for Coffee Excellence, Inc, The state of the art Cup of Excellence auction has been managed since 2002 in partnership with CommoditiesOne, a leading software development firm. For more information about the Cup of Excellence program, to become a member, or to receive samples log on to www.cupofexcellence.org.