A maize crop garden under mechanized irrigation in Eastern Province. Rwanda wants to do much more in irrigation through NST2
Rwanda’s Cabinet meeting chaired by President Paul Kagame, has approved the second National Strategy for Transformation (NST2) built on 5 priorities carried on from the previous achievements of NST1.
The new 5-year strategy (2025-2029) which corresponds with Kagame’s new term in office, following his re-election in July, will include key focus areas of job creation, export promotion, quality of education, reduced stunting and malnutrition, and enhanced public service delivery.
The NST2 will target achieving specific goals in agriculture- with a 6% growth to become more market oriented and sustainable with a productivity of more than 50% driven by an 85% expansion of key Agricole development infrastructure such as irrigated land, access to fertilizers and seeds, and boosting domestic animal production- many of which Rwanda has made primary strides.
For example, Rwanda plans to open a new seed plant and research center in Bugesera district which will reduce the country’s dependency on imported seeds. The seed subsidies have been around for years.
However, while presenting NST1 progress at Umushyikirano 2024, the Prime Minister Dr. Édouard Ngirente said that the agro-subsidy program (Nkunganire) will be increased.
Nkunganire program, in NST1, saw an increase in access to fertilizers from 38kgs/ per hectare to 70.3kgs per hectares which is above the usage of other countries in the Sub Saharan region which is at 25kgs/year while globally others have reached 150kgs/ha.
“The plan is to increase the productivity by increasing fertilisers and we have a fertilizer blending plant in Bugesera district (with 100,000ton capacity) which will help us to produce more,” he said in January.
In Trade: Rwanda also plans to increase exports from $3.5billion to $7.3billion.
This will be based on the need to increase local manufacturing plants and factories especially in non-traditional products, agro processing, mining value addition at a time when the country is set for manufacturing pharmaceuticals, construction materials, packaging materials, mosquito nets, and fertiliser blending, among others.
The mining sector, is currently focusing on value addition and new sets of taxes and regulations have been put in place to ensure this second largest forex income earner reaches that goal.
Mining revenues increased from $772 million to more than $1.1 billion, closing in on the target of generating $1.5 billion in annual mineral export revenues by 2024.
In Education: Rwanda plans to increase enrollment from 35% to 65% and this has already gained ground following the government initiative of introducing school feeding programs and bringing schools closer to communities.
The NST1 report showed that efforts in reducing time traveled to school and congestion in classes has reduced from 80 pupils/ classroom to 55 per classroom and the teacher to student ratio reduced from 1.62 in 2017 to 1.57 in 2024.
This was as a result of the government and in collaboration with citizens engagement in Umuganda activities managed to construct over 27,000 classrooms to reach over 76,000 classrooms as of last year.
At the same time, the teachers’ salaries increased by 88% in primary and 40% for secondary school teachers and the School feeding program has also been implemented in all schools to an extent that all children feed at school and more former dropouts returned to school.
In job Creation and Skills: Rwanda managed to create 1.3million jobs against the 1.5m target set in the NST1 plan. This time around, the plan is to create an achievable 1.2m productive and decent jobs,
Rwanda can bank this ambiition on development partners like USAID and Mastercard Foundation who have already pitch dived into creating youth led-jobs in Africa starting within Rwanda. For instance, Mastercard initiated its Young Africa Works strategy, in Rwanda as a starting point, to create 30 million dignified jobs on the continent by 2030.
