Kabelo Jori beat 83 fellow partners to earn a place on the Starbucks Origin Experience trip to Rwanda.
When Starbucks launched its first store on African soil 10 years ago, Kabelo Jori was just beginning his own journey behind the bar. This month, those two stories meet.
Rwanda is not a random stop on the coffee map. Starbucks has been buying there since 2004, a decade after the 1994 genocide. Coffee became one of the threads the country used to recover. In 2009, the Kigali Farmer Support Centre opened, the first on the African continent. Agronomists there work alongside smallholder farmers on yields, soil health and sustainable practice. Almost half a million Rwandan farmers now depend on the industry. Behind every bag on a South African shelf sits more than 20 years of quiet partnership.
For one South African barista, this is more than the source of a cup he has served hundreds of times. It is a place shaped by what coffee can carry.
Kabelo beat 83 fellow partners to earn a place on the Starbucks Origin Experience trip to Rwanda. He will travel to the source of one of the brand's most celebrated coffees. A coffee he has served hundreds of times. On soil he has never stood on. He was asked to share what this journey means to him.
