Olivier Kamana, Permanent Secretary – Ministry of Agriculture
Agriculture partners have reaffirmed commitment to support Rwanda in developing the fifth Strategic Plan for the Agriculture Transformation phase (PSTA5) due to start in two year time.
Rwanda is currently at the PSTA 4, which outlines priority investments in agriculture and estimates required resources for the agriculture sector for the period 2018-2024 and is supported by AKADEMIYA2063
AKADEMIYA2063 is an Africa-based non-profit research organization with headquarters in Kigali, Rwanda with a mission to provide data, policy analysis, and capacity-strengthening support to enable African countries to achieve the African Union’s Agenda 2063 goals.
Dr. Augustin Wambo Yamdjeu, the AKADEMIYA2063 Director of Knowledge Systems said that the organization is committed to supporting Rwanda’s agricultural plan through research-based policy implementation.
“To plan for such a program you need a lot of research work and AKADEMIYA2063 will use its experience (from PSTA2-3) and wide range of expertise in supporting Rwanda to have evidence-based planning to attain the PSTA5 goals,” Yamdjeu said.
Yamdjeud was speaking at a three-day Annual African Growth and Development Policy (AGRODEP) conference in Kigali this week to review progress in AGRODEP activities and provide a platform for sharing research outputs, in a bid to remobilize, strengthen, and reconnect its members in their various networks.
Dr. Olivier Kamana, the Permanent Secretary of Rwanda Ministry of Agriculture, who opened the conference said that it would enable Rwanda to launch its Strategic Plan for Agriculture Transformation phase 5 which is currently under planning.
“This conference and shared research experience from other countries will enable us to plan for the fifth PSTA and we are proud of the achievements made in the PSTA4,” Kamana said calling on support from research to improve Rwanda’s capacity in building resilient food system
The University of Rwanda researchers like Joseph Nkurunziza, the Principal, of the School of Business and Economics, said that technology and ICTs have to be at the center of agricultural transformation and institutions of high learning and have to play a key role in producing skilled manpower that will drive this transformation from subsistence to mechanized.
Participants of the Annual African Growth and Development Policy (AGRODEP)
Nkurunziza said that the university is currently in talks to separate the College of Agriculture from its Veterinary Medicine Section to improve their activities and impact on specific communities- such as the eastern Rwanda region which is widely a livestock-rearing region.
AGRODEP experts will spend the next few days in Kigali debating on different agricultural policies and measures to tackle climate change, database development, economic modeling, food security, value chain, and financing analysis among others.
However, officials of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Centre d’Études Prospectives et d’Informations Internationales (CEPII) tipped Africans to invest heavily in technology-based agricultural transformation, statistics-based policies, and resilient infrastructure to increase agro-production and food sustainable food systems.
