Rwanda Agriculture Board (RAB) has embarked on implementing a Rwf1 billion poultry and livestock project designed for jobless youths grouped under cooperatives.

Speaking to The New Times, Dr Christine Kanyandekwe, the head of animal resources department at RAB, said, under the project, 4,000 pigs, 2,000 goats and 32,000 poultry chicks will be distributed.

The project is expected to help increase meat production and enhance nutrition in the country.

Dr Kanyandekwe said they have started implementing the project in four districts of the country, namely Rusizi, Nyamasheke, Nyaruguru and Bugesera, with hopes of extending it to other districts of the country, later.

She said the first phase involved training beneficiaries on how to effectively run agri-business with the actual implementation of the project planned to start in January.

The chickens will be distributed among the youth in Rusizi and Nyamasheke districts, with a target of the DR Congo market, Kanyandekwe pointed out.

The piggery project will be given to youth in Nyaruguru District, while goats will be provided to those in Bugesera District.

"For chickens, the beneficiaries are only youth, including educated ones, who have no means to start a business on their own because they have no capital. We will, therefore, help them start business through provision of those chicks and materials to construct sheds. We will be monitoring them later,” she said.

A layer is productive within 18 months from the time it starts laying eggs, according to RAB.

Kanyandekwe said a revolving approach will be used, where beneficiaries of poultry project will be employed to buy more chicks after selling eggs.

Rwanda produced over 16,000 tonnes of chicken meat and 6,973 tonnes of eggs in 2014, according to RAB statistics.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), chicken meat per capita consumption was still below 10 kilogrammes per year, while the FAO rate for African countries is 32 kilogrammes per person per year.

Amandin Rugira, the coordinator of the National Youth Council in Nyamasheke District, told The New Times that they hope the poultry project would uplift youth through creation of agri-business jobs.

He said nine cooperatives from nine sectors in Nyamasheke will get 1,000 chicks each, while the remaining six sectors in the district will be engaged in piggery.

"The project will provide us with a kind of start-up capital that we did not have, which will enable us move forward,” he said.

"For project sustainability, we are envisaging that first beneficiaries will pass some chicks on to others. By so doing, we will expand the opportunity to other youth cooperatives for them to move together,” Rugira said.

Feeds issue

To promote animal feeds industry and reduce the costs of such feeds in the country, government waived Value Added Tax (TVA) on animal feeds.

However, farmers say their prices are still high. Chicken feeds cost Rwf325 per kilogramme on the market.

One thousand chicks can consume about four tonnes of feeds over a 50-day period.

But the Head of Animal Production at RAB, Dr Fabrice Ndayisenga, said feeds producers can reach an agreement with farmers for the latter to access quality feeds on credits and pay after getting produce.

About 86,000 tonnes of meat were produced in the country in 2015, according to figures from RAB, against a 230,000-tonne target by 2018.

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