Rwanda and China, late last month, signed an agreement that will see stevia grown in Rwanda exported to the Chinese market.

Stevia, however, is a crop that is still rare in Rwanda.

Currently, there is only one company in the whole country that exports the crop.

Named "Stevia Life Sweeteners,” the company operates in Rulindo district, where it works with a few cooperatives and out-growers from various districts to produce the crop.

With the new export protocol inked between Rwanda and China, Bruce Irambona, the Managing Director of the company told The New Times that they are gearing up for the Chinese market, and are trying to increase production, so as to make the most out of the opportunity.

"We are going to be growing stevia in a more extensive way,” he said.

"This signing has come at a good time when the prices of stevia are rising on the international market, especially in China which is home to about 90 of the world’s extraction facilities,” he added.

He noted that his company is going to expand their production capacity from 300 to 1000 tonnes of dry leaves minimum, per year.

"We are going to expand our nucleus farm first, in the first quarter of next year. Then we will expand our out-growers model by availing seedlings to the farmers to plant in their farms,” he said.

"We are also going to introduce a new variety which is better than the one we had in terms of quality and productivity,” he added.

Highlighting that Rwanda is only the third country in Africa (after Zambia and Kenya) to sign a stevia export protocol with China, Irambona noted that the market opportunity is huge in the Asian country.

He revealed that his company already has a partnership in place with one of the biggest stevia processing companies in China, and hopes more deals may be coming up.

He supposes that with time, stevia can become a key cash crop from which Rwanda fetches a good amount of foreign exchange, just like coffee and tea.

"The good news is that we don’t need 10,000 hectares to reach there. We only need 1,000 hectares to be on the level of the existing cash crops,” he said.

China has become the world's largest global producer of stevia products for beverage and food industries.

Stevia is a high value crop from which a healthy zero-calorie natural sweetener and sugar substitute is extracted.

The extract from its leaves is a white powder that is about 300 times sweeter than sugar and is used in the beverage and food industry.

Rwanda’s fertile and diverse terrain offers ideal conditions for stevia crop; with average elevation (1400-2000m), soil and climate conditions, Rwanda is able to achieve naturally high yields with sustainable and well distributed rainfalls throughout the year.

The signing of this stevia protocol comes after the signing of a number of other agreements between Rwanda and China including the protocol for the export of dried chili which was signed in March this year.

 According to information from the Rwandan embassy in China, the first containers of Stevia from Rwanda are expected to arrive in China early next year.