East Africa is a political mess right now, with diamond-rich rebel groups reluctantly disbanding and ethnic violence always around the next corner. While there has been a lot of press about exploitative practices in the cocoa trade in West Africa, the coffee trade is quite different. Coffee is grown mostly my small landholders who have both their subsistence crops and coffee trees on their own farm. (Average farm size is less than 1 Hectare). Agriculture is not mechanized or organized into large agribusiness, although milling is done collectively. When you buy a coffee from these regions, you are supporting the cash crop that brings in foreign currency, and (while there are always a few coyotes among the middleman and transporters/exporters) the most basic need small farmers have is to have a market for their crops! With a stable but sometimes tenuous peace in Burundi, it's a great time to induce economic recovery, and on top of that they have had a very nice coffee crop this year!

Coffee from Burundi is milder than Kenyas but still has that interesting "wild" note that you find in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Tanzanian coffees. It has good body and great balance in the cup.