Kungahara is a 3-year project (2024 – 2026) funded by the European Union and implemented by Rikolto in partnership with Kilimo Trust Rwanda and Rwanda Consumer's Rights Protection Organization (ADECOR) to boost the production and consumption of healthy, sustainable, and nutritious food to enhance nutrition security and local food system resilience in the region.
The Northern and Western provinces are important food baskets for Rwanda where agricultural production is driven by smallholder farmers. Despite their fertile volcanic soil and favorable climate, the Musanze and Nyabihu districts grapple with structural challenges hindering the development of inclusive and resilient food systems.
Postharvest losses due to improper storage facilities as well external market pressures, such as cross-border trade with DRC result into a limited domestic market supply. This contributes to the high malnutrition rates and stunting. Global challenges like rising food prices have increased pressure on food security in the country.
Agriculture is the backbone of Rwanda’s economy as it employs over 70% of the population, mostly smallholder farmers. They face many challenges like: climate change with droughts and floods affecting crop yields, soil degradation, limited access to agricultural inputs, finance, and technologies. They sometimes experience surplus production as they have limited access to profitable markets. This situation combined with very small plots (75% of farmers own less than 0.2 hectares of land according to FAO) results in them not achieving sustainable livelihoods. Studies have shown that they receive only 3% to 5% of the total revenue generated in the sector.
Poor access to sustainable Business Development Services (BDS) undermines smallholders’ ability to increase productivity and quality as well as farmers’ ability to adopt climate smart farming technologies (e.g., efficient solar powered irrigation systems), improved seed technologies and good postharvest management practices.
In partnership with Rikolto, Kilimo Trust and ADECOR, the project aims to boost local production while taking care of the environment by promoting climate smart and regenerative practices. It also aims at improving access to healthy food and nutrition security through local market to enhance food security. Finally promoting inclusivity across the value chain will make Rwanda’s local food systems more resilient.
Our initiative aligns with national among which the Rwanda Nutrition Policy of 2019 emphasizing the need for comprehensive and sustainable, safe and nutritious local food produced for national markets.
Promote the adoption of regenerative farming practices and climate-smart technologies to produce fruits, vegetables, and potatoes in Musanze and Nyabihu districts among 6,000 farmers, half women, through field demonstrations and facilitating access to agroecological inputs. At least 20 demonstrations sites will be established where trainers previously trained by the project will test regenerative farming practices (eg. Production of organic compost, crop diversification/rotation, integrated soil and pest management, composting, and the integration of fruits trees as cover crops), climate smart technology (eg. Renewable energy, soil and water management, efficient irrigation systems such as the use of drip and solar powered water pumps) and quality seed production. These practices will increase productivity but also improve the quality of the produce
Structuring the market to reduce transaction costs, improve trading relationships and increase efficiency in the targeted value chains (fruits, vegetables and potatoes). Brokering relationships between farmers and buyers will be accompanied by intensive training of farmers in business skills, especially pricing and negotiation skills. The capacity trainings will also concern business management and financial literacy in order to develop strong business plans that will facilitate access to finance.
We will also connect farmers organisation with business development service provides to improve access to production services like local seed systems, seedling nurseries, bio-fertiliser, and bio-pesticides but also to postharvest handling services. This includes building capacity for the adoption of postharvest management techniques such as the operationalisation of 12 zero energy storage/aggregation facilities which will act as learning hubs for climate smart postharvest handling practices.
Foster inclusive business linkages between farmers organisations and off-takers like vendors in traditional markets and retailers. To do so, we will facilitate the meetings between the parties but also increase the capacity of farmers on market intelligence through training and by giving them access to real-time market information. More efficient trading arrangements and higher prices for farmers are expected to incentivise them to invest in good agronomic practices.
A strong component of the project is the inclusion of women and youth. After a first assessment to understand the dynamics in the target value chains, we will identify which opportunities we have to strengthen their position in decision making processes especially in multi-stakeholder spaces that we will facilitate and comprising market management authorities, local authorities, vendors, suppliers, consumers and local producers. We’ll also encourage their participation in national forums such as Rwanda’s youth in agribusiness forum and Youth Connect forum.
The project strengthens market governance through building strong inclusive and gender sensitive multi-stakeholders’ platforms in the two target districts. The intervention will draw lessons and build on the nascent multi-stakeholder food systems platform in the Rubavu District (where Rikolto leads the implementation of a similar project – Rwanda Food Smart for Cities) by starting with a gender analysis to understand constraints to women and youth’s effective participation in the fruits, vegetables and potatoes supply chains, and identify barriers affecting citizens’ adoption of a healthy diet in the target districts. The identified constraints will inform the multi-stakeholder discussions involving among others market management, local authorities, vendors, suppliers, consumers, and producers to co-create a vision of change, potential solutions and an action plan on how to improve access to heathy food for all categories of consumers including vulnerable or disadvantaged ones. Stemming from the gender analysis, the action will also implement a gender action plan to coach and support women producers, vendors and processors to effectively participate in decision making spaces in marketplace governance including supporting them to self-organise. A Gender Action Plan for this programme including forming gender thematic groups for the purpose of advocacy and participation of women in the value chains.
Networking opportunities for women via digital technologies to facilitate women’s access to market information, finance, and other BDS support services.
We will also promote innovation by SME’s own by women and youth do design local distribution model that could increase the availability and traceability of the food. The food distribution model(s) will complement the overall PFSS design which will target the public market, whereas the SME distribution model will target individual food vendors and retailing shops in the cities.
We will co-create a Participatory Food Safety System (PFSS) meaning that we will design the model for this context and co-create food safety standard checklist. The proposed action aims to contribute to more accessible and affordable nutritious food to reduce malnutrition and stunting. The PFSS is a low-cost, locally based system of quality assurance along the chain with a strong emphasis on social control and knowledge building. This system is based on the active participation of farmers, consumers, market vendors, NGOs, and local authorities: they come together and form committees in order to make decisions, visit actors (farms, food stalls, transportation facilities), support each other and check that farmers and other actors are adhering to the food safety standard. Producers’ vendors and transporter will receive training on food safety practices.
The intervention will also build the technical capacity of SMEs owned by youths to come up with innovations that aim to increase efficiency in local food distribution to reduce the cost of distribution and postharvest losses along the chain. Furthermore, nutrition campaigns will be conducted to educate farmers and citizens especially women on essential nutrition concepts and how to prepare affordable and balanced meals.
Finally, the action intends to address constraints linked to malnutrition through nutrition sensitive agriculture actions such as promoting home gardening and conducting nutrition campaigns. It is expected that 6 cooperatives, among them 3 women-dominated cooperatives will help their members boost production through the maturation and adoption of business management and good (climate smart and regenerative) agriculture practices, contract farming, business intelligence and improved management capacity.
The establishment of a district food safety working group (FSWG) as part of the broader multistakeholder platforms to periodically review progress and lessons, and to organize dialogues on food safety challenges and measures to be undertaken between local leaders, civil society organisations and community representatives.
Conduct nutrition campaigns to educate target communities (especially women) on essential nutrition concepts and how to prepare affordable and balanced meals. They will be inspired by communication models such as the “Igikoni iwacu" initiative. ‘Igikoni iwacu’ means kitchen at home or in the neighbourhood. The initiative organises Nutrition Field Farmer Schools (NFFS) where participants gather at least once a week for cooking demonstrations and discussions on good nutrition
This activity aims to increase the availability of healthy food in the places where consumers already shop by supporting new or already-established vendors to become hotspots of healthy food in the local markets. The action will invest directly to improve 24 model selling points, to build a business case for 144 more vendors to improve their stalls. These 24 selling points will be supported to invest in the improvement of their stores’ branding and serve as a central location to sensitise consumers and create demand for safe, healthy, and nutritious food These selling points will be linked to suppliers of healthy food, including the farmers supported
The two multistakeholders’ committees (one per region) will work on two pilots to draft policies, regulations and budget to ensure safe market infrastructure, adequate services and amenities and transparent revenue collection and expenditure // Invest in Small Pilots: Invest in small pilots co-developed by multi-stakeholder committees to improve market infrastructure and governance.
The immediate impact on the 6,000 smallholder farmers through 6 farmers cooperatives who will boost productivity and income through adoption of different newly introduce regenerative (access to Agro-ecology inputs, water efficient etc) and climate smart farming technologies, postharvest management technologies (12 zero energy storage and aggregation centres) and linkage to market , 4 traders/ SMEs is increased income generation through the production and marketing of horticulture products (both fruits and vegetables) that leads to long-term poverty reduction. The intervention also is targeting 20,000 consumers who will access heathy, safe, sustainable, and nutritious food. Lastly, to contribute to this output the action will also directly support the upgrading of 24 heathy and safe food selling points in the local markets (which will also serve as centres for awareness raising) and accompany another 144 vendors to follow-suit.
Sustainability results at other levels include the following:
Technical Results
Economic Results
Policy Level Results
The action will have an impact on the availability, affordability, and access to safe and healthy food for 120,000 residents of Musanze and Nyabihu districts. It is expected that their awareness of food safety risks especially related to production practices and food handling will be raised and that their demand for affordable, traceable, well-handled fruits and vegetables in the local markets will be increased.
Food handling and distribution models including developing favourable sourcing policies that contribute to consumers’ access to affordable, quality, and healthy food (free from pesticides and other biological contaminants).
The action design team, which includes the main partners (Rikolto, Kilimo Trust and ADECOR), engaged with stakeholders through the multi-stakeholder forum set up in the Nyabihu-Musanze. The multi-stakeholder platform includes the organisations active in the region such as the ministry of Trade and Industries, the National Industrial Research Development Agency (NIRDA), MINAGRI, the Rwanda Inspectorate Competition and Consumer Protection Authority (RICA), Rwanda Standards Boards, District Authorities, the District Joint Development Authority Forum (JDAF), vegetable farmers and their cooperatives, vegetable vendors cooperatives, financial institutions, agro-dealer representatives, Cooperative of Farmer Facilitators and civil society organisations working in the agriculture sector.
This document has been produced with the financial assistance of the European Union. The contents of this document are the sole responsibility of Rikolto and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of the EU.
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