Rwanda’s consumer products are popular on Asian e-commerce platforms, with manufactures planning to increase volumes to tap into the opportunities.

Coffee products such as Gorilla, West Hills and Land of a Thousand Hills continue to attract sales on Alibaba’s Tmall international e-commerce platform.

In addition, the products have hit Redmart Stores, a leading e-commerce grocery retail store in Singapore.

The online groceries retail and delivery store launched a window best of Rwanda that will make Rwandan products such as chilli oil, coffee, tea, honey, essential oil and others available to online market in Singapore.

The campaign, which is a result of a partnership between Plus 5 trading company in Singapore and Business Engineers Asia is supported by the High Commission of Rwanda in Singapore.

“This is a big opportunity for us at Gashora farms, but also for other Rwandan manufacturers, having our products on a platforms like Redmart is exciting, it also comes as a challenge for us to improve volumes and quality, sustaining these markets and expanding is very important,” said Twahirwa Dieudonne, founder and managing director of Gashora Farms.

Rwandan coffee was one of the most sought after products on the Tmall international platform for the month of November 2018.

Akabanga, the extra hot chilli source manufactured in Rwanda is steadily growing its profile with demand for the product growing on international markets.

The product made its entry on amazon two and a half years ago, but it has already garnered a 5 star rating and excellent reviews from consumers.

Akabanga chilli is made by Urwibutso Entreprise, and was awarded an international certification in November 2015, and has already made it to stores in Germany, USA, Canada, UK, Australia, Japan, Nigeria, Kenya, Zambia, Angola and Gabon.

In October 2018, President Paul Kagame and Jack Ma, executive chairman and founder of Alibaba a Chinese e-commerce giant signed Electronic World Trade Platform (eWTP) project, with the aim of opening Rwandan producers to the Chinese Market through e-commerce.