As Rwanda celebrates World Food Day 2022 today, there has been challenges including the Covid-19 pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine war, and the lack of rains in some parts of the country among other threats to national food security.

But the country offers interventions in line with its food security endeavours.

Rwanda has seen a significant improvement in its food security status, with statistics from the 2018 Comprehensive Food Security and Vulnerability Analysis (CFSVA) showing that 81.3 per cent of its population was food secure.

Stunting among children under five dropped by 19 percentage points in a decade, from 52 per cent in 2009 t0 33 per cent, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda.

The government, through the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources, has kept everyone including the youth very well mobilised around ensuring healthy, nutritious, and enough food for every member of the Rwandan society and also keeping a surplus for sale to other markets abroad.

"In order for Africa to fulfil SDG 2030 commitments for zero hunger, we will need to prioritise our food systems and its ramification on how we do agriculture, post-harvest, and ultimately how we ensure agriculture production is moved in our regional markets,” said the Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources, Dr. Gerardine Mukeshimana, while addressing youth delegates at the recent 2022 YouthConnekt Africa summit concluded in Kigali in the middle of this month.

Let’s look at some of the initiatives about how Rwanda fights back with all the challenges to the food systems, to keep focused on the production of enough and nutritious food for the communities, without leaving anyone behind.

Subsidies on farm inputs including seeds and fertilisers

Seeds and fertilisers are some of the main inputs needed to ensure the availability of farm produce. But when farmers, especially smallholders, can’t afford them, it can be a threat to their livelihoods and the country&039;s food security.

To address such a situation, the Government of Rwanda initiated a subsidy scheme to bring down the costs of such inputs.

For instance, for NPK – one of the commonly used fertilisers in the country which is made of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium – the Government is currently providing Rwf927 a kilogramme as a financial support to Irish potato farmers at selected consolidated sites.

As a result, a farmer only pays Rwf603 per a kilogramme of NPK instead of the unsubsidised price of Rwf1530.

In the current fiscal year 2022-2023, the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources is spending billions in subsidies for quality seeds and fertilisers in order to support implementation of the country’s crop intensification programme (CIP). This project is intended to increase food production through lowering the costs of seeds and fertilisers for farmers among other extension services.

So far, the project has been allocated Rwf36 billion in subsidy (consisting of Rwf5.16 billion on seeds and Rwf30.84 billion on fertilisers) under the national budget, but it is expected that this money could be increased during budget revision.

The targeted activities under this project include distributing over 3,430 tonnes of quality seeds, 50,179 tonnes of fertilisers amid the rising costs of this farm input, as well as 37,736 tonnes of lime with Government subsidy, according to data from the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources.

Agriculture and livestock insurance scheme

The Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources launched the National Agriculture Insurance Scheme (NAIS) on April 23, 2019, with aim to mitigate risks and losses incurred by farmers due to unpredictable natural disasters, pests and diseases that affect their livestock and crops. It is subsidised up to 40 per cent (insurance premiums) by the Government of Rwanda. It is also meant to enable farmers to easily access financial services, hence ensuring the flow of credit to the agriculture sector.

As of October 2022, the Government had spent slightly over Rwf1.2billion as a subsidy to farmers since the inception of the insurance scheme in 2019, statistics from the ministry indicate.

As a result, 74,845.13 hectares of crops, over 81,000 cattle, 372,754 chicken, and 7000 pigs have been insured, while crop farmers and livestock keepers have received a pay-out of over Rwf1.1billion and nearly Rwf680 million respectively.

In addition, agriculture credits amounting to Rwf2 billion has been unlocked through the scheme.

Value chains benefiting from the government’s agriculture insurance scheme currently include poultry, piggery, and cattle for livestock, while crops include Chili, French beans, maize, Rice, soya bean, beans, and Irish potatoes.

Strategic Grain Reserve for food relief during times of shortages

The National Strategic Grain Reserve is meant to deal with unexpected food shortages caused by circumstances such as droughts and pandemics.

In the current fiscal year, it was allocated over Rwf7.4 billion under the national budget, which has been an increase compared to the allocated amount in the previous year.

It is expected that this money will be spent on, among other interventions, purchasing food to be kept in the reserve, such as maize, beans, and rice among other agricultural products.

During the Covid-19 pandemic-induced lockdown, this strategic reserve supported needy people affected with food relief. It also provided food assistance to those who were affected by drought in the Eastern Province of the country last year.

Irrigation for resilient farming

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources, to cope with climate change induced droughts which were threatening Rwanda’s twin goals of food security and poverty reduction and learning from traditional practices, the Government of Rwanda decided in 2014, to accelerate irrigation development.

It indicated that the acceleration of irrigation development was done by coupling existing large scale irrigation developments with Small Scale Irrigation, which targets individual or farmers’ associations or cooperatives working on less than 10 ha of land.

Under this scheme, farmers are advised to use Small Scale Irrigation Technology (SSIT) to grow [mainly] high value commodities such as vegetables and fruits to realise profitability.

The annual report 2020-2021 by the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources showed that area brought under irrigation amounted to over 66,840 ha - including over 37,270 ha of marshlands, 8,780 ha of hillsides, and 20,787.5 ha developed under Small-scale irrigation (SSIT).

Plans are underway to increase the irrigated farmland to over 102,000 ha by 2024.

Local seed production for self-reliance

Up until 2020, Rwanda was dependent on imports for its seed needs, mostly for three key food security crops including maize, wheat, and soybean, according to the Rwanda Agriculture Board (RAB), which indicated that the country was spending around Rwf7 billion annually on importing more than 3,500 tonnes of those seeds.

Currently, the country is self-sufficient in seeds for these three crops, hence saving money, jobs as well as investments into its agriculture sector, RAB indicated.

Dependence on seed imports was not sustainable as there could be risks involved if a country is just hinging on other countries to source these key farm inputs, such as the disruption in the supply chain, and possible spread of diseases from those countries.

Major strategic investments like the recently launched $300 million agriculture de-risking project

On September 30, 2022, the Government of Rwanda and the World Bank Group launched the Commercialization and De-Risking for Agricultural Transformation Project (CDAT), the five-year initiative running through April 30, 2027.

CDAT – a US$300 million (over Rwf316 billion) project – targets to increase the use of irrigation and commercialisation among producers and agribusiness firms across the country, as well as access to agriculture finance – low-interest loans – and insurance.

On strengthening agricultural insurance, the project will inject $20 million funding, this will provide insurance premium co-financing whereby beneficiaries will get 60 per cent contribution from the project, and then they will meet the remaining 40 per cent.

The target is to insure 265,000 ha for crops, and 337,000 livestock (heads).

Regarding overall expected impact, about 235,977 households (accounting for 11 per cent of Rwanda’s 2.1 million farming households), including women and youth will benefit from the project’s value chain and infrastructure development, 2,235 from agriculture finance, while 575,000 and 75,000 farmers will benefit from the project’s crop and livestock insurance respectively.

Construction of a fertiliser blending factory due in 2023

Also, Rwanda is constructing a $38 million (approx. Rwf39 billion) factory with an annual capacity to blend 100,000 tonnes of fertilisers, in Bugesera District. The facility is expected to be completed in May 2023.

It is in the context of increasing agricultural productivity as it will be providing appropriate fertilisers tailored to the different types of soils in various areas of the country and according to crop needs.

Meanwhile, the average fertiliser use in Rwanda rose from 32 kilogrammes per hectare in 2017 to 60 kilogrammes per hectare in 2021, Prime Minister, Edouard Ngirente told parliamentarians in April this year.