Rwanda, a landlocked country in east central Africa and also known as the “Land of a Thousand Hills,” is one of the world’s leading coffee-growing nations. One in every 30 people in the country works in coffee growing. But, in the past, a lack of transportation channels had affected exports of Rwanda’s coffee beans, requiring them to pass through several intermediate wholesalers before they reached the Chinese market.
However, in 2018, China and Rwanda signed a memorandum of understanding under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which aims to boost connectivity along and beyond the ancient Silk Road routes. In that year, Rwanda also became the first country in Africa to join the Electronic World Trade Platform, a framework for cross-border electronic trade launched by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. From then on, Rwandan coffee beans began entering the Chinese market directly through trade conducted on e-commerce platforms. Direct logistics chains mean
