Production And Export Of Rwanda Coffee

Coffee is Rwanda’s premier export oriented crop and is a source of foreign currency. A study was conducted to analyse the Performance of Production and Export of Coffee from Rwanda. The time series data on production, area, productivity and export were collected for the period ranging from 1976 to 2010. They were split into two distinctive periods for the analysis of the growth rate and for the analysis of instability. The exponential model was employed to compute the compound growth rates; the Chow test was applied to check the structural change, instability indices and Hazell’s decomposition model were employed to measure instability and their source. Markov chain analysis was used to analyze the direction of trade. The growth in area under coffee declined from 2.5 per cent in first period to -1.03 percent in second period. The growth rate in productivity as well as production during second period shows an increase rate from -3.60 per cent to 2.73 percent and from 0.15 to 1.33 percent respectively. Chow test showed a structural change both in area and export quantity growth rates. Insatiability indices showed that export quantity was more stable when compared to export value.