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Rural poverty approaches, policies and strategies in Rwanda

Following extensive consultation across the country, the Government of Rwanda presented its Vision 2020 Umurenge, a flagship programme that constitutes the overall framework for the country’s long-term development. The programme’s key objectives are to transform the rural economy by modernizing agriculture, and to reduce the overall incidence of poverty to 30 per cent of the population. By 2020, the goals are to triple agricultural production, to multiply exports fivefold and to reduce the proportion of the population living on agriculture to 50 per cent.

Although poverty reduction and agricultural development formed an important part of Rwanda’s poverty reduction strategy paper (PRSP) for 2001–2005, the allocation of resources was uneven, with agriculture receiving only 0.2 per cent of resources, compared with 4 per cent and 2 per cent, respectively, allocated for education and health. And although agricultural growth in past years was positive, it fell short of targets. The main constraints were limited access to improved inputs and financial services, increased erosion accompanied by loss of fertility, and relative drought in some parts of the country.

In 2006 and 2007, the government conducted several studies and surveys (in particular, the 2006 household survey) as a basis for reviewing PRSP performance. The main conclusion was that the country needed to intensify its efforts to modernize and increase its investments in economic growth. As a result, a new poverty reduction strategy – the Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy (EDPRS) – was formulated. The strategy covers a five-year (2007–2011) planning sphere for Rwanda’s medium- and long-term development and contains three flagship programmes related to export-led growth, Vision 2020 Umurenge, and governance. The programmes, which have helped guide the choice of IFAD’s main activities in Rwanda, are directly relevant both to the agricultural sector and to rural poverty reduction.

The EDPRS also builds on the country’s Strategic Plan for the Transformation of Agriculture (PSTA), which was prepared by IFAD in collaboration with the Netherlands and the Department for International Development (DFID) of the United Kingdom. The PSTA aims to transform subsistence farming into market-oriented agriculture through a concerted pro-poor approach involving the administration, producers, support services, civil society and the private sector.

Based on the PSTA, in 2005 the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources (MINAGRI) adopted a medium-term expenditure framework that laid the groundwork for an agriculture sector-wide approach (SWAp), which was launched in the country at the end of 2008, after the policy update in the form of the PSTA II had been agreed upon. The sector-wide approach offers important strategies for reducing rural poverty and is endorsed by the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness of 2005, to which IFAD is a committed signatory.
 

Source: IFAD