Our team of five, diverse female students form part of the Student Multidisciplinary Applied Research Team (S.M.A.R.T ) at Cornell University. While in Rwanda, our principal goal will be to provide market research analysis for a Rwandese community-interest agribusiness - Ikirezi. Ikirezi locally produces organically certified essential oils for regional and international sale. We arrived to Rwanda--the land of one thousand hills--on January 7th, 2017. Prior to our departure, each team member completed macroeconomic analyses of the East African nation. Additionally, we arrived with novice understandings of the country’s socio-economic status. Thus far, we've been afforded first hand observation to the country's historical resilience (as well as their optimism to move to middle income status by 2020) despite the tragic turmoil that occurred two decades ago. The latter allowed us to hit the ground running, ready to hone in on the market analysis requested by our partnering organization, Ikirezi. Their staff includes: the managing director and founder, Dr. Nicholas Hitamana, the administrative/sales assistant Michele Uwubuntu, and the operations manager Samuel Ntawiheba. They welcomed us and gave us a detailed history of the organization's beginnings and evolvement. Furthermore, we learned the details of the organization's daily operations, discussed our research framework and received Ikirezi's input and specific requests. Join us on our journey as we document the organization's production chain, highlight some of the farmers' success stories, and detail our research process.
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