The United States Agency for International Development, through its project, Private Sector Driven Agricultural Growth (PSDAG), is piloting a technology solution and web application that is designed to help increase farmers’ productivity and the market competitiveness of Irish potatoes.

Dubbed Farmbook, the tech solution is expected to help address challenges Irish potato farmers face such as lack of easy access to market information and low harvest incomes due to separate places of sale.

The development follows the Ministry of Trade and Commerce move to set up a new strategy to market Irish potatoes in Rwanda through potato collection centres.

The US$180, 000 (Rwf134.2 million) ICT pilot project is expected to come into force in January to facilitate Irish potato farmers in business planning, market analysis and product tracking.

Speaking at the signing of the grants agreement on Thursday, Melanie Bittle, the PSDAG project Chief of Party, said using ICT will boost farmers’ harvest  through professional management of the collection centres, better business planning, and improved trading conditions, which will ultimately lead to improved output and farmers’ incomes.

She said, "The ICT system is going to be used to enable  farmers access information on new Irish potato prices on the market in different parts of the country. They can also use it during self-evaluation on their activities, keeping records, planning their businesses and to increase their incomes.”

The Farmbook project will be applied in 10 potato collection centres in Musanze, Burera and Nyabibu districts with over 2000 farmers expected to benefit from it.

The cooperatives will be given tablets which will help them keep records during data collection of their daily agricultural activities.

Six cooperatives from the three districts will benefit from the initiative.

These include;  Cooperative Ibukwa Muhinzi and Cooperative Muhinzi Tuzamurane Birashoboka (CMTB) from Nyabihu District, Cooperative des Agriculteurs de Paume de Terre at de Ble (COAPB) from Musanze District, and Cooperative pour la Valorisaton des Marais de Burera (COVMB), Cooperative Inyenyeri and Cooperative des Agriculteurs de Paumes de Terre ( COAPOM) from Burera District.

Cooperative representatives at the signing ceremony appreciated the support, saying Farmbook would help them gather information on the farm outputs and inputs to gauge whether they get profits or losses.

"Previously we were unable to evaluate yields and we did not have records on outputs and incomes.  We are excited to have this support and hope  that once we are able to record whatever is happening in our cooperatives, we will learn a lot from our harvest production assessment in order to increase incomes in the next seasons,” said Dieudonne Kajyambere, the Ibukwa Muhinzi Cooperative head.

The project is part of the US $25 million five-year USAID’s PSDAG project implemented since 2014, which seeks to facilitate increased private sector investment to upgrade agricultural value chains.