CNFA intends to increase agricultural production
Cultivating New Frontiers in Agriculture (CNFA), an American organisation has established a five-year agriculture project worth $30 million to bolster farmers and agribusinesses profits, boost agricultural productivity, and improve nutritious agricultural products in the country.
The project dubbed “Feed The Future Rwanda Hinga Wunguke” (grow profitable) will be implemented by CNFA, in partnership with USAID, and the Ministry of Agriculture.
It targets 500,000 farmers by helping them to improve their resilience in the face of climate change, but also increase dietary diversity by 30%, for women of reproductive age.
“Although the agricultural sector in Rwanda faces significant climate-related challenges, we are confident that the introduction of new tools and technologies will give its farmers the ability to maximize growth, improve food security and increase the consumption of nutritious foods,” CEO of CNFA, Sylvain Roy said.
“We look forward to working with local and global partners to facilitate sustainable change while boosting agricultural productivity,” Roy added.
To increase agricultural productivity and profits through “grow profitable project”, several institutions have committed to joining hands on facilitating access to knowledge, information and improved inputs and technologies. These Institutions include MarketShare Associates, a Denver-based socially driven consulting firm and the government.
According to CNFA, it will facilitate farmers to access funds, enhancing the financial literacy skills of farmers, and agribusiness farmers, so that they can obtain and manage funding to boost production.
“We shall work with Rwandan farmers and other market actors in order to ensure increased access to profitable markets and to generate increased incomes for their products and services,” Daniel Gies, Chief of Party at Hinga Wunguke, another partner for the project said.
The Multi-million-dollar project follows a government plan of increasing agriculture productivity and profitability across the country.
For example, Prime Minister Edouard Ngirente said that despite suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic and other variables like climate change, numerous plans have been put in place to enhance production in the agricultural sector.
In this situation, land consolidation to boost output amounted to roughly 760,000 hectares.
Irrigation is also encouraged as a means of combating climate change. According to the Prime Minister, the government plans to increase its irrigated land by 2,096 hectares this fiscal year, bringing its total to 70,222 hectares.
Premier made the statement during his opening remarks at the 18th National dialogue Umushyikirano council that the government’s efforts to address issues left behind by the COVID-19 epidemic have resulted in greater productivity.
