After spending more than four decades in Canada, François-Xavier Nziyonsenga decided last year to return to his motherland to pursue a business in the floral industry.

Tell us more about yourself

I was born in Rwanda around 70 years ago. At that time, we didn’t know how to record birth dates and I assume it’s around the 40s. After finishing high school in Collège St. André (Nyamirambo), I relocated to Montréal, Canada where I lived for 45 years.

I came back to Rwanda for the first time in 2014 with a dream to start a business in the floriculture industry.

What made you come back to your home country after four decades?

Like anybody else coming back home, I had so many projects that I wanted to set up in my home country. Back in Canada, I was working on product research & development with plants growing in the marshlands. And when I arrived here, one among the opportunities I explored was to re-valorize our so many Rwandan marshlands.

I am a man of the soil—I like how it smells and it excites me whenever I put my fingers into its softness...

By studying the Rwandan soil for months, and noticing how it is daily hauled by tons to enrich Egyptians by the Nile River route, I wanted to know what service I could better render to the country and to my people. One of the activities that I discovered would be first to purify all the dirty waters from uphill that are going to the marshlands.

Nowadays—because of the construction all over the cities and villages—there is a huge amount of dirty, chemically contaminated and waste waters going down the hill and ending in the marshlands and ultimately polluting all the areas where we grow some of our vegetables.

The first thing I did was experimenting on how to purify the marshland waters using local grasses so that they don’t endanger lives. The results were impressive.

You mentioned earlier about "floriculture industry”, can you clarify a bit more?

My initial idea wasn’t only about purifying marshland waters, but also planting species of flowers new to Rwanda into those marshlands. I began with multi-colored arums.

We have only white arums in Rwanda. This is a commercial and decorative flower that I think we haven’t explored that much ever since it was imported to this country nearly a century ago. I asked myself why we can’t grow different colors of this magnificent plant.

I researched and found out that there are arums that can be grown in different colors, and that’s a common thing in Europe. That’s how I came into contact with a breeder (Wikipedia: Plant breeding is the art and science of changing the traits of plants in order to produce desired characteristics) from New Zealand, specialized in producing multi-colored arums.

I approached him and he agreed to sell me a few tubes of different colors—I ordered seven colors that I tried last year.

What was the experience?

These types of flowers have been very prolific and I am confident that they are going to help me start a flower industry here in Rwanda. The results I have got so far are very promising.

What do you say about floriculture in Rwanda?

Simply that we don’t have a traditional use of flowers compared to other cultures, say in Asia or Europe. Only recently, we have been using flowers solely for marriages, funerals and birthdays.

This is a culture totally new to Rwanda, but it can be developed. We now have Rwandans born and raised in other cultures from around the world. Those Rwandans have acquired some ways I consider as a positive addition to our culture. Slowly, we certainly shall all integrate the full use of flowers into our daily lifestyles.

That’s what I am trying to do by developing this industry so that it can be integrated into our culture. It’s somehow too hard for the time being because the flowers that I am growing now are for a very limited and selective market. But it will expand.

Talking about the market, how is the business doing?

I have been pushing in restaurants and hotels but it’s still very hard to penetrate that market. Partly for the major reason evoked above. What makes me so confident though is that people love my flowers when they see them.

One would have the impression it’s something they’ve been subconsciously missing. The multi-colored arums bring something vibrant and striking for them.

Any challenges?

The difficulties I found in growing flowers in Rwanda is a very limited market, even though I don’t consider it to be a problem because a market has to take the first baby steps and people have to be educated to appreciate.

The second hardship is to find a market abroad because the local one is almost non-existent at the moment. I am working on that. There’s a vibrant and wider market abroad, and it’s always open to flowers grown in Rwanda as well.

It’s also very hard to find planting materials (such as seeds and chemicals) from Rwanda. I have to order them from Kenya or elsewhere. My dream is to supply the region and I know it will become a reality.

As the President says, we have to be focused and work hard by developing local solutions. I know that we can grow beautiful flowers in Rwanda, but we have to be determined, tenacious and creative.

Is the soil good enough for the flowers?

In Rwanda, we are fortunate enough to have all kinds of soils: we have marshlands, we have downhill, mid hill and uphill soils; we have volcanic soils and different other types. This, combined with our idyllic climate, really is a blessing not endowed to many other countries in the entire world.

That's why I have always asked myself, "With that phenomenal potential in place, why not start a floriculture industry?"

If you have any advice, what would it be?

Imagine our institutions such Minagri, Naeb, our embassies abroad, PSF, etc., with the mandate to promote export of homegrown products, not having a single pot of flowers in any of their offices, even at their reception desk.

They ought to showcase flowers grown in Rwanda to their visitors and in all their events. With planed determination and action, we can grow different species of flowers and sell them to the world, as we do with coffee and tea.

Those flowers can fly alongside their respective stories. Everything about Rwanda has a richer story to be told, but this time the story will be recounted with some fragrance, with the unique Rwandan beauty, and with this country’s immense richness: medicines, pharmaceuticals, and many other kinds of industrial products.