Episode 123: Introduction to Burundi Coffee - A conversation with Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian

In today’s episode we’re speaking with Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian, Owner of JNP Coffee and Board Director of the Specialty Coffee Association, to get an overview of the Burundi coffee market – a vibrant, yet relatively unknown origin.

Founded in 2012, JNP Coffee produces, promotes and trades African specialty coffee and is committed to transforming the lives of people in Burundi through economic empowerment. 

We are excited to announce we are proud sponsors of the 2024 World Cup Tasters Championship. 

Gerra Harrigan has joined the JNP Coffee team as director of sales & strategy. The Sharon, Massachusetts, US resident comes from Mighty Peace, where she was green coffee director, after a long time as a trader with Interamerican Coffee. She previously served as vice president of sales and marketing for New Harvest Coffee Roasters.

“We are very excited to have Gerra Harrigan join the JNP Coffee family,” said Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian, founder and CEO of JNP Coffee. “She values our mission and brings to us her strategic acumen and depth of knowledge of coffee and its key players. Her contributions will enable our...

Podcast with Women in Coffee Project

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Celebrate International Coffee Day with the Women in Coffee Project! In the podcast, the host, Amaris Gutierrez-Ray, discussed with Jeanine and the other two panelists how for-profit businesses were specifically focusing on maximizing income for producers and bringing tangible expressions of equity into their business by design.

Podcast with Jake Leonti (F+B Therapy)

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In this podcast, Jeanine shared her story of how she ended up in the coffee industry and why she cared so deeply about her purpose that she was willing to put everything on the line to see it succeed.

"Two prominent global coffee experts are in the middle of a North American summer tour to show off green coffees sourced from Burundi. The Burundi on the Road Show is being led by Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian and coffee consultant Sherri Johns. Burundi-born Niyonzima-Aroian is the"

The coffee world was a very different place twenty years ago. This was before the infusion era of tech-industry investments, venture capital and consolidation; back then the specialty coffee industry was a hodgepodge of many small businesses. On the evaluation side, a single form—introduced as the industry standard by the Specialty..

We are thrilled to welcome you to the official announcement of The Sprudge Twenty, presented by Sprudge and Pacific Barista Series.

This is the fifth class of Sprudge Twenty honorees, part of an annual tradition honoring and amplifying leaders in the global coffee community in partnership with Pacific ....

The “Grand Cru Burundi” auction, on 8th December 2022, is building on 10 years of social impact programs developed by JNP Coffee, a woman-owned business founded in 2012, based in Bujumbura, Burundi and Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

Burundi’s first-ever private auction of specialty coffee, titled Grand Cru Burundi, will debut on December 8.  Featuring 26 Bourbon coffees scored at 87 and above, the auction is organized and sponsored by JNP Coffee, a coffee producing, exporting, and marketing company founded by certified Q grader and Q processor, Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian.

The auction of 26 highest-scoring specialty coffee from Burundi in East Africa’s Great Lakes region has been rescheduled to 8 December. The decision was made in early November to allow ample time for prospective bidders to receive and roast samples of the 26 coffees on offer.

East Africa produces some of the most exciting and sought-after coffees in the world. And while these have typically come primarily from larger producing countries like Ethiopia and Kenya, their neighbor to the southeast, Burundi, would like to have a word. With its high altitudes and volcanic soils, coffees produced in Burundi can be deeply complex, offering up both big time juiciness a la Kenyan coffees as well as the delicate florals of their Ethiopian counterparts.

JNP Coffee to host Grand Cru Burundi virtual auction on 30 November 2022. The auction will include 26 micro-lots, with an average score of 90 points. Sample boxes are available now.

• Burundi-focused green coffee trading company JNP Coffee is launching its first private specialty coffee auction, called Grand Cru Burundi, to take place online on Thursday, Dec. 8.

• Coffee is quite literally the fuel that gets us through our day — or at least jumpstarts our engines. But for such an important commodity, most of us don’t give a second thought to where it comes from, how it’s made or who makes it.

• The Jubilant Blend from Peet’s Coffee combines the efforts of two pioneering women in specialty coffee: Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian and Phyllis Johnson.

• Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian, who has been operating her global coffee company JNP Coffee since 2012, trades, produces and exports specialty coffee from her native Burundi. After starting the company in California, she relocated to Worcester in 2014 and now runs operations from Shrewsbury.

• In celebration of black women coffee producers for Black History Month, Peet’s Coffee has released Jubilant Blend, a medium roast created with JNP Coffee beans sourced from Burundi, blended with beans from Brazil sourced by another black woman-owned coffee business, BD Imports.

• Growing up in Burundi, a small country on the African

• continent, Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian learned as a young

• girl how coffee can transform a life.

• Through the revenue from coffee beans...

• SHREWSBURY, Mass., December 13, 2021 – Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian, founder of JNP Coffee, has been elected to a two-year term on the Specialty Coffee Association’s Board of Directors, effective January 1, 2022.

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• Read full Press Release Here.

• Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian, Northeast Regional Coordinator for the SCA USA Chapter and founder of JNP Coffee, hosts a panel of professionals from Brazil and Colombia, who will present and discuss research findings on the recent drought and frost in Brazil, and the impact on Brazilan Coffee Plantations, as well as the current challenges Colombia is facing. There will be time for Q&A with the audience, so come prepared with your questions!

• Africa has seen some incredible wins for gender equality in the last few years, including boosting women’s leadership, being home to the country with the most women in politics in the world, and the banning of Female Genital Mutilation in several nations...

• Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian, Northeast Regional Coordinator for the SCA USA Chapter, with moderator Grayson Caldwell hosts a panel of world coffee professionals including Nelson Valverde, Iliana Delgado Chegwin, Jonia Leite Soares, Alejandro Cadena, Yuki Ebizawa & Amanda Eastwood, who will discuss their unique perspectives on issues currently challenging sustainability of the specialty coffee industry. Followed by Q&A with the audience.

• Our Burundi Kinyovu earned a third-highest rating in a cupping of African Great Lakes coffees for Coffee Review’s June 2021 report. Produced by smallholding women farmers of JNP Coffee near the Kinyovu Washing Station entirely from local strains of the Bourbon variety of Arabica, and processed by the washed method (fruit skin and flesh are removed from the beans before they are dried).

• "After graduating high school in Burundi, Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian moved to the U.S. for college before living all over the world – Canada, France, Asia, the U.S. – working for corporations. Now, the Shrewsbury resident runs JNP Coffee, which focuses on helping women farmers in her native country rise out of poverty and carve out a place in the international market."

• On the webinar, they’ll touch on their personal journeys in leadership, challenges they have faced and how to overcome them as a leader. Followed by Q&A with the audience.

• On the webinar, they’ll chat about the rules and language of financial reporting, especially as businesses consider PPP loans and grants, along with topics around employment law as it relates to testing and vaccinations, post-COVID furloughs, job descriptions, unions for baristas, and more.

• JNP Coffee founder Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian’s advocacy for the coffee farmers of Burundi through her sustainability-minded business is featured in Barista Magazine online.

• Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian shares what makes Burundi an ideal coffee supplier and the unique challenges facing the women at origin. 

• Launching a new mocha stout, Springdale Beer recognized the coffee beans in their new brew had a story to tell. And the narrator was Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian.

• “Technically Speaking: Defining and Measuring Quality in Coffee from Production to Preparation”
   

• Lily Kubota of Roast Magazine highlights the work of JNP Coffee within the first three minutes of this podcast on quality variations. 

• One of two participants in “The Heart of East African Coffee: Burundi & Rwanda,” Jeanine Niyonizma-Aroian discusses women in coffee, supply chain challenges, the people and coffee of her country.

• These women discuss the unique challenges they have faced during COVID-19, each of their unique perspectives as women coffee producers from different parts of the world, and how they promote equality in their own communities. Thank you again to our moderator and panelists for their time and effort in participating in this important, and necessary, discussion!

• Interview with the world’s youngest Q grader, Frankie Volkema, notes JNP Coffee as a source for coffee grown by young women farmers in Valerian Hrala’s “CoffeeIs.Me” podcast at about the 16:30 marker.

• Interviewed in the fourth episode of Sprudge magazine’s monthly podcast, Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian addresses her role supporting women coffee farmers by promoting and rewarding high-quality cherries.

• Conversation with young Q grader and host Chris Deferio credits JNP Coffee

• Throughout the month of July, Burundi coffee importer JNP Coffee has been donating 5% of its green coffee sales to the nonprofit GoFundBean for a fund to supply grants to baristas in financial need due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The fundraising effort runs through Friday, July 31.

• “We believe that with more information about the virus and with the numbers of infected folks going up that a second run ... (read more)

• JNP Coffee’s announcement of vital partnership with Go Fund Bean, which aggregates virtual tip jars for coffee workers around the world, to support baristas who have been suffering financially due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Join USA Chapter North East Coordinator Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian on Thursday, June 18 at 1 pm PDT / 4 pm EDT as she leads a panel discussion on reopening practices post-COVID-19.

• Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian joins a conversation with Black coffee industry leaders on the Black Lives Matter movement, experiences as Black professionals in the coffee sector, and the work required to dismantle systemic racism in the coffee space and the wider culture.

• Join SCA US Chapter North East Regional Coordinator Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian and guest speaker Ryan Garrow of Logical Position on Thursday, May 28, 2020 at 1 pm PDT / 4 pm EDT for a presentation on B2B and B2C marketing in the face of a recession.

• Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian discusses how JNP Coffee is responding to the pandemic and how things look on the ground for the farmers she works with in Burundi with “Keys to the Shop” podcast host Chris Deferio. Listen now.

• There is a tectonic shift happening in our industry. Are we ready for how things will change for us and for our customers? Will we take this as an opportunity to take action? Or will we sit back and try to regain the status quo?

• Coffee community advocate Michelle Johnson is making 2020 her year. She recently confirmed a spot at nationals during the Barista competition qualifier in Nashville, Tenn.—after not competing for nearly three years. During these three years, she’s made The Chocolate Barista blog a lifestyle platform for Black people and other racial minorities in the...

• “I KNOW I TALK VERY FAST—my mother tells my friends that I speak fast in all languages,” laughs Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian into the phone, where she’s called from her home in Massachusetts. (Jeanine speaks five languages). It’s true, she is an animated and captivating conversationalist and speaker, but that’s not the only reason she’s hard to keep up with: Jeanine is also a...

• ​JEANINE NIYONZIMA-AROIAN AND BLANCA MARIA CASTRO EXPLORE THE IMPACT A COLLABORATIVE APPROACH HAS ON LOCAL COMMUNITY INITIATIVES.

• When International Women’s Coffee Alliance (IWCA) Chapters pursue support for projects to strengthen their local communities and improve the lives of their neighbors, their scope tends to be...

• ​Celebrating its fortieth anniversary this year, family-owned and Oakland-based coffee roastery Mr. Espresso has just released two new blends from Africa: Burundi women of Kinyovu and Rwanda Bufcafe Remera (which currently holds a sky-high 92 rating on CoffeeReview.com).

• ​Helping women coffee farmers in Burundi rise above poverty through the production of high-quality coffee stands as the heart and soul of JNP Coffee’s work. A native of Burundi, I founded JNP Coffee LLC, www. jnpcoffee.com, in 2012 to help coffee farmers in my homeland, one of the world’s poorest countries. By

• promoting quality and gender equity, we read more...

• We're proud of the difference we're making in Burundi and in the coffee industry.