Spirit of enterprise fuels the rise of a Rwandan liqueur brand

There cannot be many famous drinks named after cows, but if Albert Rudatsimburwa has his way there may soon be five. The Rwandan talk-show host, musician and entrepreneur became so fed up with local bars and supermarkets stocking expensive imported spirits that he decided to make his own.

"Everything people consume here is imported, and so expensive - spaghetti, alcohol - it's absolutely crazy when we can do it ourselves," says Mr Rudatsimburwa, who has spent the past two years trying out different flavours in labs to brand a Rwandan liqueur that will be "funky as funky can be".

The idea is to take locally farmed coffee and lemon, turn it into a syrup in a plantwith capacity to produce 30,000 bottles a month, and mix it with imported alcohol to create Rwandan-branded and packaged liqueurs.

Production of the 30 per cent-proof booze started six months ago and the drink, named "Isamaza" - Kinyarwanda for "the entertainer" - already lines bar shelves across the capital Kigali. Each of the five flavours is named after a distinctive type of cattle, easily the most prized possession in Rwandan culture.

Mr Rudatsimburwa says he wants to help redress the dearth of local production and boost the country's image. Hence the names and locally inspired packaging: he "dresses" the bottles in Rwandan woven straw bangles.

"It's time to say we're proud we're Rwandan," says Mr Rudatsimburwa, sipping his own "Kibamba" version of the drink - the coffee flavour named after spotted cattle - at Dolce, one of Kigali's many open-sided bars.

The drink, which retails at $18 a bottle, is so far being stocked only in local joints; Mr Rudatsimburwa's car boot is filled with cases and marketing material. But the project marks a symbolic step for a country 1,000km from the coastline that is dependent on imports for almost everything.

The tiny, landlocked nation is still recovering from the genocide that in 1994 killed close to a million people and destroyed every aspect of industry. Today Rwanda depends on tourism for much of its foreign exchange and, with exports worth only $600m a year, suffers a grave trade deficit equivalent to 17.2 per cent of gross domestic product.

While agriculture represents the lion's share of the economy, it exports most of the produce of the fertile green country - regularly dubbed "the land of the thousand hills" - without processing it first. The government is keen to increase domestic processing to deliver "value-add", backing a new special economic zone for industries focused on agro-processing, but the effort is still nascent.

Mr Rudatsimburwa also has a trader's eye: he is now importing gin, vodka and other spirits at discount prices, and is also creating vitamin drinks.

His project may catch on. Inyange, a drinks company owned by business people loyal to the hardline ruling party the Rwandan Patriotic Front, which intervened to stop the genocide, is now developing some of his vitamin-heavy soft drinks for nationwide consumption.

Inyange's factory fridge is stocked with his bright blue and red vitamin-fuelled liquids. Once they launch, Inyange says it wants to target exports to the wider east African region.

It might be tiny, but Rwanda has proved itself as an avowed adopter of successful approaches to both business and development, albeit with authoritarian backing. "We're going to be trendsetters in this continent," says Mr Rudatsimburwa.

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