Rift Valley Women’s Coffee, KENYA

Vava Angwenyi is the founder of Vava Coffee in Nairobi in Kenya – a social enterprise that aims to ensure coffee farmers get premium prices for the specialty coffee they produce. In 2018, she launched the first line of Fairtrade-certified coffee owned by smallholder women, coffee farmers, in Kenya from two women-centric co-ops from the Rift Valley; she also actively involved in educational sponsorships with engaging the youth of East Africa to get them excited about one of their most prized agricultural products – Coffee. Vava says her work has “shed light on the coffee industry, its challenges, and its beauty – including the struggles experienced by the small-holder coffee farmer, the barriers that prevent empowerment for women in coffee, and the movement and innovations that are starting to shift the Kenyan coffee industry toward a brighter future.