Fight against erosion in Muhanga district
Muhanga District citizens say that activities to reduce erosion started to pay off as they are now growing their crops without worry that they would be eroded.
They said that some of the activities that are yielding do canalization among other activities that defy erosion, and are urging every farmer to do so and create other activities that help to reduce erosion.
According to Muhanga District officials they have already achieved 15% of the goal they have set in order to reduce erosion; starting from Mars 2022 where they are targeting to plant trees on more than 28000 ha.
One of the citizens said that they are now harvesting their maize and other crops as they are now free from erosion due to the trees, glasses they have planted in their fields, and the canals they created.
“It is okay now, we are harvesting different crops, including cassava, maize, etc… But before we only had dumped on our lands due to erosion.”
Though the citizens are happy, they are requesting the government to assist them to recover where their soil has already gone and caused some infrastructure like roads to be destroyed.
Octave Nshimiyimana, the President of the Muhanga District Council said that every year, the government set some amount of money on a national budget to fight against erosion to assist the population in the activities they manually do to reduce the erosion in their neighborhoods.
“In line with the fight against erosion, we use terrasses (amaterase y’indinganire) whereby we cooperate with the population, we put money and work with them in creating those terrasses and repairing the destroyed infrastructure,” he said.
Nshimiyimana along with other officials attended the National community work, known as “Umuganda” at the end of July, and they urged the citizens to own those activities, double their efforts, and plant trees on the agreed surface, as they are the prime beneficiaries of erosion reduction.
