Skip to main content
Knowledge4Policy
Knowledge for policy
Supporting policy with scientific evidence

We mobilise people and resources to create, curate, make sense of and use knowledge to inform policymaking across Europe.

  • Publication | 2026
Strengthening coffee traceability in Rwanda to boost trade compliance
Global Food and Nutrition Security

This policy brief summarizes Rwanda’s journey to embed traceability in the coffee value chain. Over the last few years, greater emphasis has been placed on tracking and tracing transactions in the coffee value chain to meet regulatory requirements for exports and to monitor trends in the sector. Specifically, the European Union’s regulation on deforestation-free products (EUDR) requires coffee and several other commodities to be produced on deforestation-free land in order to be sold on the Single Market. For Rwandan coffee this is especially important as it exports around half of its coffee exports in terms of volume to the European Union. Faced with this growing regulatory backdrop, the National Agricultural Export Development Board and BK Techouse developed a web-based application and Android App, the Smart Kungahara System (SKS), which tracks and traces transactions between coffee farmers, processors and exporters. FAO and the International Growth Centre further enhanced the app, improving the data architecture of the app and adding features such as geospatial data, which helps to geolocate where coffee is produced, turning the SKS app into a fully-fledged traceability and monitoring digital public good.