Arkansan: Foreign aid percolating in Rwanda

He touts its boost for coffee growers

Westrock Group CEO Scott Ford (left) and retired Adm. James Stavridis prepare Thursday to testify before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs.
Westrock Group CEO Scott Ford (left) and retired Adm. James Stavridis prepare Thursday to testify before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs.

WASHINGTON -- Arkansan Scott Ford told a U.S. Senate committee Thursday that his coffee company has pumped $100 million into the pockets of Rwandan farmers, something he said wouldn't have been possible without the help of groups funded by U.S. foreign aid and private philanthropists.

Ford, the CEO of Westrock Group LLC in Little Rock, testified Thursday during the Senate Appropriations Committee's State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs subcommittee meeting titled "Diplomacy, Development and National Security."

He testified alongside development partner and actor Ben Affleck. The two-time Oscar winner, who will play Batman in a forthcoming film, is the founder of the Eastern Congo Initiative.

Other witnesses included philanthropist Bill Gates, who founded the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Born Free Africa chairman John Megrue; and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis, who co-chairs the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition National Security Advisory Council and is a retired admiral.

This week the U.S. House and Senate are voting on the fiscal 2016 federal budget, the nonbinding blueprint for how Congress will appropriate money to agencies, programs and the military. Hours after the hearing, the Senate voted 96-4 against a budget amendment sponsored by U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., that would have increased defense spending by cutting several programs including foreign aid.

Committee chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., mentioned the forthcoming vote several times during the morning hearing. He said about $50 billion that the U.S. spends on foreign aid amounts to less than 1 percent of the more than $4 trillion federal budget.

"You could eliminate every penny we spend and not move the debt one cent," he said, urging politicians to stop overstating how much money goes to foreign aid. "Please stop because you don't know what the h*** you are talking about."

The witnesses each spoke about how their organizations leverage public and private funds to inspire good will and help around the world, from ending the mother-to-child transmission of AIDS to building health clinics to stopping the spread of malaria and polio.

Ford, former chief executive officer of Alltel Corp., said that while volunteering with his three sons in Rwanda in 2004, that country's president asked him to return someday. President Paul Kagame asked him to invest in a business that would "help the poorest of the poor taste the benefits of the free market system because once they do, they won't settle for a government that wouldn't give it to them."

Westrock works directly with farmers in various African and South American countries to mill, roast and process their coffee beans and sell them around the world. It also operates a roastery in Little Rock and offers financing to farmers.

The company voluntarily pays more for coffee cherries than other companies traditionally were willing to give the 20 percent of Rwandans who earn their livings in the coffee industry, he said. That has forced other companies to pay farmers more for the cherries, which contain coffee beans, Ford said.

"In the first six months of our operation, we saw the price that the farmers in Rwanda received increase 30 [percent] to 50 percent," Ford said. "That was the power of somebody just setting a reasonable price in terms of the cost of the product."

The hilly country, in central and eastern Africa, is about the size of Maryland. Rwanda has been relatively peaceful and stable in recent years after a 1994 genocide, when members of the Hutu tribe killed about 1 million Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus.

With a population of about 12.4 million, it is the most densely populated country in Africa, according to the CIA 2014 World Factbook. About 90 percent of the labor force works in agriculture, mostly subsistence farming. The book ranks Rwanda among the world's poorest nations.

Ford said Westrock invested in local community projects, like providing access to clean water to clean and process the cherries, and training farmers in how to increase their yields and product quality.

Westrock has expanded into Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia and, with the help of Affleck, into Congo.

"We had the United States ask us 'Would you go to Congo? and I said 'Not without Batman,'" Ford said. "And Batman showed up, and we went to eastern Congo."

Affleck's group partnered with the U.S. Agency for International Development, Catholic Relief Services and the Howard G. Buffett Foundation to train farmers in best-agricultural practices and built a supply line to move their crops from farms to possible buyers. Affleck said that before his initiative got involved in Congo, coffee farmers and their cooperatives had no access to financing or credit.

"To close this gap, we brought in the experts. We approached Scott Ford's company," Affleck said.

Starbucks Coffee Co. has since bought the Congo coffee cooperative's entire first export of 40 tons of coffee for American consumers, he said. The Seattle-based coffee firm is now in talks to develop that country as a key source for its coffee.

"This isn't charity or aid in the traditional sense, it's good business," Affleck said. "From a relatively modest investment, farmers' incomes have more than tripled, and they can now afford to send their children to school, put food on the table and access proper health care. And as a result, the world has a new source of high-quality coffee."

Ford said it would have been difficult to start a business from scratch in such a tumultuous region without the infrastructure built by philanthropists and groups paid by U.S. foreign aid.

"My wife and my father stood with me and everybody else said I was a madman, but we have seen $100 million of incremental income go into the pockets of the Rwandan farmers from our being on the ground there over the last six years. That's a 50 percent increase in their standard of living," he said.

"We're just one company operating in a limited sphere of influence. I'm good with that, but I hope that we serve as at least an example of what an American private-sector actor can look like when we align with like-minded organizations."

Metro on 03/27/2015

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