Climate-smart agriculture: Not just for big farms anymore

by President Paul Kagame and Kanayo F. Nwanze

Without the support of the world's small farmers, climate talks such as those set for the Rio+20 Summit can never translate fully into climate action, This is why, as the focus shifts to building a global green economy, Governments, other policymakers and the business community from developed as well as emerging economies must recognize the inextricable linkages between climate change, the environment and food security – and, critically, bring smallholder agriculture into discussion.

Every day, smallholder farmers in developing countries confront the real world consequences of climate change and are often first to fall prey to fickle global markets or increasingly extreme weather events.

Yet smallholders cannot be ignored when it comes to climate change solutions:  the world’s half billion small farms  provide up to 80 percent of the food in  in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia.

Can we really count on these farmers, many of them desperately poor, to take a leading role in addressing the twin challenges of food security and environmental sustainability?  Can they produce more food while protecting the natural environment?

We believe the answer is a resounding yes.  Real world experience shows that they can.

Critical to success is adopting environmentally sustainable techniques that preserve and enhance the soil and ground water.

Examples include terracing to prevent soil loss and degradation through erosion and flooding; minimal or zero tillage, crop rotation and the application of manure, compost or mulching, to improve soil structure and fertility; and agro forestry systems that integrate trees with crops and livestock to produce more in sustainable ways.

The recent experience in Rwanda signals hope that increased agricultural output and environmental protection really can go hand-in-hand.

In Ngororero district in the country's southwest, for  example, an IFAD-backed project has seen Rwandan farmers increase crop yields by up to 300 per cent through improved methods, including using better seeds, good planting technologies and applying fertilizer at the optimal time.

On a larger scale, farmers across Rwanda are increasing the use of manure instead of chemical fertilizers that produce greenhouse gases. In some areas of the country, smallholders are now terracing their land and using other natural techniques to improve the water-holding potential of the soil, improving soil quality and increasing their output.

And while these approaches have proliferated during the past five years, Rwanda has quadrupled its agricultural production.  Today it is now a food-secure nation – remarkable progress in just a few years.

Importantly, Rwanda’s efforts to promote climate-smart agriculture are supported by a wider policy and investment framework that seeks to ensure that every farmer, however small, has access to improved seeds, technical know-how and, crucially, a market opportunity for their farm output. This is an important lesson for every developing country.  If we are to ensure that smallholders can produce more food in sustainable ways their farming should be profitable.

Accordingly, scaling up environmentally sustainable farming among smallholders throughout the world will require a reshaping of national policies and the architecture of public and private investment so as to ensure that farmers can learn these techniques, see their value and employ them profitably.

The lesson is simple.  Identify the climate-smart farming practices and techniques that can boost agricultural production, get the relevant know-how to smallholders, support them as they make the transition, and create an enabling policy environment.

If we do this, – and national policies and international development initiatives support a transition to a climate-smart agriculture – we have no doubt that smallholders throughout the world will step up and do their part.

Paul Kagame is President of the Republic of Rwanda. Kanayo F. Nwanze is President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), an international financial institution (IFI) and a specialized agency of the United Nations


Originally appeared in Project Syndicate

Agriculture in Rwanda: Ownership and Improving Delivery #hlf4

By Agnes Matilda Kalibata, Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources of Rwanda

As the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness held in Busan, South Korea, commences, Rwanda has a chance to convey its way of doing business in a ever–changing aid architecture. The meeting centers on the Paris Declaration, a tool for donors and developing countries to hold each other to account. In Busan, a large and increasingly mixed community of development stakeholders will look back while seeking to outline the future of aid. Rwanda’s experiences are particularly valid for discussion in Busan. Rwanda’s story of aid effectiveness is one of strong leadership and meeting the challenges faced in managing developmental assistance. 

From the President’s lead, vision and ownership has allowed Rwanda to stay focused.  In the agriculture sector, over the past four years Rwanda has received strong support both from aid multilaterals and bilaterals with different modalities, to emerging countries such as India and Brazil, that have begun to provide public and importantly private sector investment in the country, to new cross-cutting funds such as Climate Change funding. Rwanda’s Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources (MINAGRI) has sought to improve the efficiency of government structures to deal with various development interventions. Primarily, the sector strategy, the Plan for the Transformation of Agriculture II (PSTA II), allows us to streamline and harmonize assistance through our programs that focus on, among others, irrigation, crop intensification through input provision, post-harvest handling and storage improvements and export promotion. This year, due to this clarity, time-bound respect for results and strong programming, numerous bilaterals, such as DFID and USAID, are seeking to provide budget support to the agriculture sector. 

The last four years have been characterized by turning these investments and support into food security and poverty reduction for Rwandans. Rwanda has moved from a food insecure country with 20 out of the 30 district labeled food insecure by FAO standards to a food secure nation with no single district below the required food needs.  In August 2007, Rwanda initiated the Crop Intensification Program to increase both the levels of production and productivity amidst the various challenges that Rwanda faces.  Key pillars of this effort include, land consolidation, input access, reduction of post harvest losses and access to markets.  The program ensures that every farmer, however small, has access to improved seeds, fertilizers, extension and a market opportunity.  From a country that was in the past characterized by chronic food insecurity, Rwanda’s yields have quadrupled compared to what it was four years ago.  

In many ways Rwanda is a microcosm of the global future of agriculture – a world in which countries have to maintain food production in the face of decreasing arable lands, rising fuel prices, increasing populations and an increasingly volatile climate. For Rwanda, in particular, these challenges will not go away. Therefore, to stand the best chance in developing the country and reducing poverty, how we do the business of development is paramount. The meeting in Busan is a chance to improve this business. From a zero tolerance to corruption to upholding Paris Declaration principles, Rwanda has much to contribute to the Busan meeting. 


Also published in TerraViva

What do numbers tell us?

Training and skills development play a key role in many sectors but when it comes to the difference that capacity-building, agricultural education, vocational training and skills development can make in offering a route out of poverty to rural poor people the debate becomes more serious. Why? “Today, about 34 per cent of the total rural population of developing countries is classified as extremely poor…” and agricultural education is 1 of the 6 policy and institutional measures “ that governments can take to provide an enabling framework for sustainable agricultural intensification “ …… agricultural education is “fundamental to enable women, men, young people and children to develop the skills they need to take advantage of new economic opportunities (source IFAD RPR 2011)” . In this context, it is extremely important for IFAD to assess the role and scope of capacity building, training and skills development in IFAD portfolio. The 2 days international consultation "Skills development for poverty alleviation: sharing IFAD experiences in technical and vocational skills development”that took place in IFAD on 22 and 23 June was an opportunity to:

• understand the potential of training in IFAD supported projects
• discuss the results achieved in the framework of the Initiative to Mainstream Initiative (IMI - a DFID supported initiative to promote innovations
• identify successful and innovative training approaches in IFAD supported projects (six field studies conducted in on-going IFAD projects in Bangladesh, Colombia, Ghana, Madagascar, Rwanda and Sudan were presented), and
• pave the way to strengthen the impact of training on poor rural communities in order to give the rural poor the individual and collective capabilities to overcome poverty.

In terms of numbers, results are impressive! Since 2005, more than 4.3 million people have been trained (40% on agricultural technologies and production and 23% on enterprise development and employment) through IFAD programmes. But numbers, as rightly pointed out by panellists at the international consultation, need to be interrogated to give a sense of the impact of the 4.3 million trainings delivered on the lives of those people in terms of empowerment. Unfortunately data is not collected systematically and consistently; participants agreed that more efforts should be made to improve the quality of the data collected in order to answer crucial questions such as: Who are the people trained; are they men, youths or women? and most importantly are they the rural poor we need to reach? What is the use of these trainings? Did the trainings make any difference to the quality of life of the trainees?

Definitively, this is the experience of the women trained in the context of Gash Sustainable Livelihoods Regeneration Project (GSLRP) in Sudan . For them “the training on nutrition, food processing and home economics was the first opportunity to socialize and acquire new skills, said Aisha Sheik GSLRP Programme Officers in Sudan.

Kudos to GSLRP project for:

• campaigning for women’s participation in training
• influencing men and having men support the participation of women in training (it wasn’t easy…it took 2 years but they did it!!)
• overcoming barriers like the lack of venues where women could be trained
• optimizing the techniques acquired by those who benefitted from the project training on brick making and having them build the training venues with green bricks
• sharing with us during the conference the thoughts and the feedback of the beneficiaries of the training. Their words:

"Before the training, we were just sitting in the house, meetings have broadened our thinking."

"We learned how to speak Arabic and how to pray and cite the Koran"

"Before the training, our meals were sorghum porridge or Kasha, now we cook vegetables and meat; prepare special meals for children and pregnant women."

“Before we did not care when the vaccination team came for our children, now we all go out and know how important it is”

President's visit to Rwanda - Chronicle of day 3

20 July 2010

Rush! Rush! The Minister of Agriculture is waiting at the President’s office. We scramble out of the meeting with the Minister of Trade and Industry, which had a surprisingly strong emphasis on agriculture and post-harvest activities. All this is improvised, the meeting with the Head of State was shifted several times, but what did we expect? Today is the start of the 20-day campaign period for the presidential elections, and at 1pm Mr Kagame is to kick it off his campaign with a massive rally at the national stadium. So we rush past the security checks, get installed in the large meeting room with a massive video conference facility that could stem from a science fiction movie, and when President Kagame flies in we cannot be but impressed.

Proud of government’s accomplishments, he recalls in detail his encounters with farmers and the development stories they told him. He is clearly content with the one-cow programme, and remembers well the past difficulties of PDRCIU, our infrastructure project, in which his intervention assisted greatly. He confirms that much still remains to be done, and that the high population growth poses an obstacle to development in the country. A surprising request of his, with which we happily agree, is to concentrate our development efforts, rather than spreading them thinly. The President also reminds him that IFAD is a development institution owned by its members, rather than a donor with its own agenda. Overall, a very supportive meeting, we find as we stroll back to the cars through the garden-like Presidential compound.

In the afternoon we have some time off as a result of the programme items that were shifted to the morning, and I manage to get some work done in the office. The press conference also becomes a victim of the election campaign: it gets postponed to 8pm and when we emerge 90 minutes later we are hungry as wolves. At Chez Robert in town they still have dinner, but with the usual wait we finally get to eat just before 11! I’m lucky to be able to go to bed for good after that, but the President, Ides and Géraldine have a flight to catch, at 3am to Nairobi and on to Zambia. I bid them farewell, grateful for a supportive visit and also deeply relieved that it all went so smoothly. Tomorrow I need to thank the project staff for their hard work.

By Claus Reiner

President's visit to Rwanda - Chronicle of day 2

19 July 2010

Breakfast at sunrise, and off to the Centre for Agricultural Information and Communication, still in Kigali, that was inserted into the programme just before we did the plan-by-the-minute during the dry run on Thursday last week. We know that at 13h30 we have to be back in town to meet the UNDP ResRep, who was kind enough to delay a retreat of the UN country team to make this possible. Dense traffic, we arrive with 10 min delay. The delay keeps growing, and my worries with it.

An impressive display of internet interactivity and a functioning radio studio give us an idea of the reference centre for the community innovation centre (CCI) that features a little later on the programme. When we’re ready to go, our most faithful 10-year old IFAD car is the only one not to start, and luckily the 3 of us remaining can join Aimable, our CPO, in the FAO vehicle. In the marshland, rice farmers explain cultivation and water retention technologies, and these explanations satisfy the President's research heart and put a smile on his face. At the CCI, he cut the inaugural ribbon so that farmers could demonstrate the applied research results and their watershed plans. Even microenterprise clients get their stage. The whole CCI was bustling with activity, it was a real pleasure to see this centre come to life. Remember the community competitions we looked at with a few Rwandans in Peru? Well, it's at the CCIs that these are now planned to be happening. Unfortunately we need to cut a few farmer presentations short, in order to make good some of our ever looming delays.

On the way back, a sericulture cooperative is still waiting, I know that enormous preparations must be waiting for us there, so we decide to at least give it a quick stop. But then, before we get there, the cars swerve to the right onto another dirt road. The Minister of Agriculture had decided that we absolutely needed to see the One Cow per Poor Family programme. That almost saw me faint.

In the end, we did it relatively quickly, and I couldn’t but admit that it was a perfect complement to the agricultural programme. Even a presidential TV interview fitted in, and at the sericulture cooperative, which had the smallest silkworms you’ve ever seen on display, we sped through the production room, on plastic sandals to make sure we didn’t contaminate the place. With some forceful driving on the way back, we made it to the UN lunch with no more than 30 min delay. I almost couldn’t believe it.

The rest of the day was very quiet in comparison. Meetings with private sector representatives and the Minister of Finance went smoothly, and by 6pm I started oscillating between the hotel pool and sauna to catch my breath. And then I had to get dressed again for the official reception and dinner.

by Claus Reiner

IFAD President visits Kigali Memorial Centre

On the first leg of his Rwanda trip, this afternoon, IFAD President, Dr Kanayo Nwanze accompanied by Her Execellency Agnes Matilda Kalibata, Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources visited the Kigali Memorial Centre.

The Kigali Memorial Centre was opened on the 10th Anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide. The Centre built on the site where over 250,000 people are buried is a permanent memorial to those who fell victim to the genocide and serves as a place for people to grieve those they lost.

Nwanze and Kalibata laid wreath and paid their repects to the victims of the genocide. A visibly touched Nwanze, listened carefully to the explanation offered. Signing the VIP book, Nwanze wrote: "Beyond words".

Tomorrow, Nwanze will travel to Bugesera District, where he will inaugurate the Bugasera community innovation centre.

President’s visit to Rwanda

Sunday night, 18 July 2010


After much preparation, that I don’t want to get into here, we have finally arrived at the starting position. The President has arrived in Rwanda, he has rested and had some time off over the weekend to meet up with some friends who live here, and tomorrow the tight programme will kick off with a field visit very early in the morning. Apart from last-minute preparations, today’s only programme was the visit to the genocide memorial, accompanied by the Minister of agriculture and our communication team made up of Géraldine, media expert, and Declan with his video camera. Having visited this site of profound sadness several times before, I dropped them off and retreated to the hotel to prepare tomorrow’s speech.


When the three returned, they were uneasily silent, the President having very well packaged the feeling into the phrase “beyond words”, written into the visitors’ book. We all agreed, the atrocities that have been committed in this country in 1994 are as hard to imagine as the motivations and social dynamics at the time are to understand. Do we all have the possibility of mass murder in ourselves? How can we make sure it will never happen again? We felt that checking the population growth and thus the pressure on resources is certainly part of the answer. After all, Rwanda is the most densely populated country on the continent, and growing fast.

In the little time left I indulge a little in the luxuries the best Hotel in Kigali has to offer. At dinner, we go through a few talking points for tomorrow, making sure that the key messages get delivered to government. One point makes me nervous: the meeting with the head of state, Paul Kagame, is set for Tuesday, shortly after the official opening ceremony of the presidential elections at which he will address the crowds at the national stadium. Will this work out? Government tells me not to worry, which I try to do. To be continued.

By Claus Reiner

Basement blues

Saturday, 23 January 2010. The final day to wrap it all up. We spend the full and only day in the hotel basement, a kind of behaviour that has probably not yet been seen in Cusco, the tourism capital of Peru. Maria is back with us, having overcome the altitude sickness.

The first session, a left-over from yesterday, draws conclusions from the rural financial services in the project. The overall feeling is that the savings-based approach is very sound and sustainable, and that the combination of savings with micro-insurance, especially life insurance, is very powerful in assisting the rural poor to acquire assets while making sure no calamity throws them back to square one. It was suggested to limit the savings subsidies in time, and to include an insurance package in the savings products similarly to the credit products.

Lunch is spent preparing the innovation plans with which we hope to put the learned bits and pieces to practice in our own work, without which the entire tour is useless, as Ariel reminds us.

Making sense of it all

The Rwanda team kicks of with a joint proposal to integrate CLARs and competitions to provide capacity building grants through 2 IFAD-financed projects and one financed by Belgium. The plan would use local structures already being set up, but with a new focus on popular presentations of the proposals and results to be assessed by CLARs. An innovation would be the strong involvement of community innovation centres (CCIs) as secretariat to the CLARs supported by project staff, thereby supporting sustainability. The plan is explicit in its implementation plan, aiming at organising the first community competitions in December 2010.

Next is Venezuela. Their innovation plans promoting rural financial services, especially a savings culture, starting with a few pilot MFIs (cajas rurales), by providing subsidies to savers and additionally using competitions between savers (especially women) to allocate credit to the most performing savers that request credit. This sounds like a very interesting combination of elements of the SSDP. Marcela suggests undertaking exchange visits with Colombia.

The Colombians themselves, true ambassadors of their country, start their presentation with a publicity movie on Colombia. They continue with a talking map, evidently having learned something on the trip. It proposes:

• a pilot activity on including cultural identity in the business promotion, also to respond to the cultural diversity of the clients;
• the inclusion of micro-insurance with small subsidies; and
• the promotion of local talents. Finally, Marcela from the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), Colombia, plans to orient the local authorities in its development efforts, carry out exchange visits and to promote rural savings strategies.

The Irrigation and Rural Livelihoods Development Project (IRLDP) in Malawi wants to pilot some activities in 3 districts. The project team wants to move from project-driven grants for inputs and materials to CLAR-type allocation systems, include services by talents through direct sourcing in the these grants, link farmers to microfinance institutions and improve community-level marketing, and use PRAs to develop talking maps for natural resource management. Ariel suggests that convincing the authorities of the changes will be a challenge, and we propose that the project look for allies to support the cause.

Elizabeth Farmosi’s proposal is called Alliance Sierra Sur – Mother Earth. It is targeted at the Sierra Sur project, with new mechanisms for the population to access resources, alliances with public and private institutions, and improvements to the conditions of the competitions in favour of the poorer members of the participating communities. Good stuff, but possibly the recommendations are a little late for the project and can rather flow into the next design.

Maria Hartl proposes a Learning Route on rural financial services in Peru, targeted at IFAD-financed projects, IFAD staff (especially field staff) and other partners, covering savings, credit, insurance and leasing. Recommendations to Maria were to include remittances, and to match well the innovation needs and experiences available. I wonder how many of us are considering whether this should be their next route.

The final stretch is the auto-evaluation of the Learning Route, which I find really embarrassing: how can you just praise everything. In desperation, I propose organizing the background material so that it’s a little easier to work with. But honestly, the organization and contents was terrific, and now it’s on us to implement the learning plan, as otherwise Ariel will come back some day and tell us that it was all futile. I hope we can count on some ongoing support from PROCASUR and the project for that.

The last night we spend at Chicha, a restaurant specialising in refined traditional dishes. The tour ends with a fun round of surprise awards of certificates between routeros, at which it becomes clear to us that we’ve become a close group of friends that has shared a very intense experience.

I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that this tour was the best thing I did this year.

Claus Reiner, Country Programme Manager, IFAD

Learning about territorial rural development, cultural maps and ecotourism

Wednesday, 20 January 2010. Departure from Chivay to Sibayo. Breathtaking landscape with rugged mountains, steep gorges, stone walls, some alpaca and cattle, very few people. We arrive in the small town that is in a process of reconstruction, fully on the basis of its low stone houses and thatched roofs. Martin from Malawi likes the place so much he'd like to stay. Today it’s Maria Hartl’s time to get altitude sick, and Lorena from the Lima office takes good care of her, after a visit to the health post Maria retreats to the room. This is also the town that won the support for the underground electricity connections with its elaborate play at the CLAR yesterday. We visit the Sumac Pallay handicraft association that has managed to start a medium-scale business processing the wool of the 20 members. With a local trainer and some matching grant support, their lives have clearly improved. Yet for further growth they are still dependent on grants, and for the assets they own it's surprising that the only financial service they use is a savings account. All seems to be targeted at tourism. It intrigues me that there aren't any tourists, but Raúl, the mayor, assures me they come in organised tours by the busload year-round.

We continue through the picturesque town, past stone walls on which cacti were planted to discourage animals from climbing across. Next is a company of 10 local partners producing trout in many large tanks built and owned by the municipality. The tanks are managed by the company under a contract, without rent, and have a capacity to produce 5 t of fresh fish per month. The business is new, albeit well operational, and according to Raúl it represents a model for economic development. However, for an investment as large as this it appears that more partners could be involved, and possibly it might have been more equitable and less risky to set it up as smaller units.

He then proceeds to give a passionate presentation in a thatch hall, outlining his development approach in working with local associations and companies that need to compete for public support. He likes incentives. The municipality provided a laptop to the best scholar of the agricultural college, it subsidises thatched roofs, English courses, daily pay for road works for residents, lots of things. And he likes competitions. Any support the municipality provides it allocates through public competitions: pasture improvements, rehabilitation of houses, reforestation. What could be a sleepy little town is actually a dynamic local capital that manages to leverage 14 Sol for every Sol of its budget, and a participatory budget at that.

After the warm midday sun the cold sets in. We follow a couple of presentations on the concept of territorial rural development, cultural maps and ecotourism, and after a good round of comments and questions disappear with our host families to their rustic guest houses where we'll spend the night. Janvier, Benson and I are staying with Dora, a little lady in her 50s with traditional dress, and share a room that fits just about 3 beds and a table. Very homely, simple, clean. We help ourselves to coca tea, and for the joint dinner in the town hall Elizabeth Farmosi arrives in traditional Colca dress. After dinner there’s music with a local group, we move out to the log fire that struggles badly with the thin air, but when it finally gets going there’s dancing around the fireplace until we’re all warm and tired.

Claus Reiner, Country Programme Manager, Rwanda

Learning across continents: Latin America sharing knowledge with Africa

Tuesday, 19 January 2010. Today we start with the real thing. A CLAR in action, this is what we came for, so it’s difficult to hide the collective excitement. Plus it’s a warm sunny day, much in contrast to yesterday’s cold rain. But first we go off to the project office, strangely by bus, as we could have easily walked the 300 m.
A casual chat with project staff. Maria Hartl enquires about the definition of communities, and it turns out that the ancestral laws have found their way into modern Peruvian legislation. These extended families have legal status, and are dealt with by the project just as other registered groups and companies. Mary from Rwanda asks about the collaboration with local government, which is promoted in the SSDP by facilitators in each municipality. Staff fluctuations in the municipalities are a problem. For communication with communities, the project’s events in the main squares are the best advertisement for its initiatives. Benson, the vice mayor of Kirehe in Rwanda, really likes the idea of using the CLAR competitions to build up local support, after all this can be very helpful in local elections.

We move back to the main square, where the CLAR session is already in full swing, together with the rural enterprise fair. The fair has been built up across the street from the municipality, a row of colourful booths offering mainly handicraft and cheese, in front of which a tent has been pitched to accommodate the members of the CLAR. Behind them the local project office has set up a mobile office to provide administrative support. In front of this tent, one group after another does not only a presentation of what they’d like to do (and for ongoing ones, what they’ve achieved so far), but full-blown shows with dancing, singing, flower-clad bodies and – the absolute killer – a complete play with several stages and an array of actors including human houses and real tourists. Only the development worker was missing! The groups further show that they manage the project by showing maps and accounts, and by answering questions from CLAR members. Once all are through, the CLAR will declare its verdict on each request for funds. As clouds and some raindrops come over the surrounding peaks, the plaza clears conspicuously and the day’s results get announced: most projects are approved; the group representatives receive the announcements with relief. We flee for lunch, and I guess our groups are not indulging in such a lavish meal, with causas, trout and alpaca.

But no time to relax, Ariel rushes us on to the discussion round with CLAR and group members. We learn how dead easy the voting works, that the community groups hire local TA to prepare their progress reports, that they receive occasional unannounced visits by CLAR members, and how small the CLAR members’ allowances are. Véridianne declares she is deeply impressed with the competitions with judges from different interest groups and client groups that present their own plans and reports.

After a short preparatory break we run the first analytical workshop, at which we jointly analyse the overall project. Our praise is so comprehensive, it almost feels awkward to keep repeating it. There is a genuine feeling that it is amongst the project types of the future. Luckily, to keep things somewhat balanced, we also found some weaknesses, including some targeting aspects, the strong involvement by the project unit, the credit gap for successful enterprises and the low involvement of the communities in preparing and revising their business plans. Nonetheless, the overall feeling is that the Southern Highlands project is too good to be true, and having reached 20h00 again we decide our communal nackerdness has reached a level that doesn’t allow us to launch the final item of the day, an analytical round of the CLARs and the enterprise fair we witnessed today. We keep that for tomorrow, and a group of cold Africans forms around the mobile gas heater as we wait for dinner.

Claus Reiner, Country Programme Manager, Rwanda

Africa conquers the Andes

Monday, 18 February 2010. At 3h45 the phone rings, I fall out of bed, it’s the director of an NGO in Madagascar. He tells me the two staff that have just arrived in Kigali have been arrested by the police and locked up in a cell, he doesn’t know why. He also couldn’t know I’m in a different time zone. The two are to work with the Support Project for the Strategic Plan for the Transformation of Agriculture (PAPSTA), but I can’t call Janvier, the project coordinator, as he’s with us on the tour. So I call André, field coordinator of KWAMP, who says he’ll look into this. At 4h10, when I call Madagascar again to calm them down I hear that the problem has already been resolved, it was something connected to the visas, we don’t know the details and at this point we don’t need to know.

Short sleep till 5h30, fall out of bed, get ready, back on the road. We pull out of Arequipa after a quick trip through the colonial centre with its white stones, and start climbing the cordillera. Arequipa itself is at 2300 m, the surrounding snow-peaked volcanoes more than 6500. At 3000 m, Beatrice, our guide, start a coca chewing demonstration and distributes small plastic bags of leaves. At around 3000m, tucking our little bundles of coca leaves away in the cheek pockets, we drive past road signs saying "zona de neblina", but I think the two are unconnected.

With strong arguments about preventing the altitude sickness, Beatrice manages to convince all Africans to give it a try, except Janvier, who is apprehensive for the proximity to cocaine. Martin from Malawi claims feeling high, which is probably the altitude. At 4040 m, he doesn't feel any better. Beatrice prescribes chocolate. Here we also pass vicunas grazing next to the road. These camelids belong to the government, but the locals own the wool. We pass the Aguas and Salinas Blancas National Reserve, and Martin starts feeling better. A little further up, going through the crater of the Chucura vulcano, we encounter two intriguing plants adapted to extreme conditions: bright green lumps called Asorela compacta, and Pecnofilium that resembles a yellow-greenish pancake. Shortly afterwards we pass the highest point at Patapampa, 4910 m, and thanks to Beatrice's tricks not a single soul feels sick.

Alpaca country

However, upon arrival in Chivay, Véridianne gets hit by altitude sickness. Again the PROCASUR experts jump in, conjure an oxygen bottle out of somewhere, reassure her and advise to rest.

Meanwhile, the session starts. Carlos Leyton, ex-minister of agriculture, gives a presentation on challenges of the Southern region of Peru. The crops of opportunity per micro-region smack a bit of the priority crops declared by government in Rwanda. A real dilemma is the conflict between farmers and mining businesses, including individual miners that have no links to the place they mine and no interest in not polluting the water.

But time is short, we are rushed off to the municipality and administration of Caylloma Provine, were we are surprised by a reception with brass band, traditional dancers with men comically disguised as women. Having been invited by the group to dance on the main street outside the municipality, we are invited in. Long and fiery speeches are made, and each routero is presented with a large decorated heart of bread as a sign of friendship. The endless ceremony again moves on to joint dancing, a little surreal with giant bread hearts, and before we know it we have moved from relatively to badly behind schedule.

Back at the hotel, we are glad to find Véridianne feeling much better. In the conference room, we learn about the general setup of the Southern Highlands Project, its impact and outreach, and enjoy a short film on the project. The ensuing discussion clarifies many issues (on financing details, sustainability, poverty focus, obligations of winners of competitions, women representation, etc.) and keeps the level of attention well high with full participation until 20h00. A full day ending with a rush to the cybercafé to send my blog on its way. I’m not sure I’ll be able to get a connection tomorrow, so please bear with me.

Claus Reiner, Country Programme Manager, Rwanda

Africa meets the New World

Sunday, 17 January. Today, our long-awaited Learning Route to Peru finally started. Having flown into Lima from Rome the night before seemed like a long haul, but when I met the 6 Rwandan participants in Amsterdam they had already spent more than a night flying. In Lima, they would have had every right to look like zombies, but surprisingly they didn’t. As we kicked off, there was some excitement in the air in getting to know the project staff from the New World. It’s not the fault of the Malawians that to “us Africans” Colombia and Venezuela are more exotic than they are. Anyway, I had the impression that we did the introductions with more curiosity than normally on such occasions.

Soon it became technical, and more participative than some had thought. As Rwandans, we were to come clear on not only our objectives from the route, but also what action points we would put in practice upon return. Very refreshing to move quickly beyond presenting project objectives and activities, and to do some actual thinking about what we had come here for. Janvier, the project coordinator, knows all too well that the concept of community competitions had been integrated in the Kirehe Community-based Watershed Management Project (KWAMP) on the basis of the experience in Peru. This is what we wanted to see in action. The core phrase in his presentation brings out what we believe to be the key to making it happen in Rwanda: to assist the communities in developing confidence for their own initiatives. Confidence, of course, has many facets, but I’m not going into any of that now.

The PROCASUR team confirms my impression of professionalism in organising this multicultural multilingual tour. They are firmly in control. In fact, the effective air with which Ariel solves the teething problems of the audio system and the relaxed simultaneous translators who go through hours of translating into English and French without a break (little Rwanda can be demanding with its two international languages) were finally topped by the hassle-free departure to the airport despite running half an hour behind schedule. And this first day, which I thought risks being quite boring with a couple of dry presentations, wasn’t that at all. Despite our jetlag, we were riveted by the series of presentation that felt more like erudite university lectures that gave answers to questions it seems we had carried around with us for a long time.

When the head of Agro Rural of the Ministry of Agriculture kicked off, it didn’t take long to dawn that what we’re about to visit is backed by an institutional might we are not used to, at least us Africans are not. The monitoring capacity Agro Rural established to track its investments is simply impressive, and a ministry desperate to give away its spending power to local committees is also not easy to find. Can this work in Rwanda?, I think to myself. But Rome was also not built in a day, what’s important is to start.

The other speakers were not less sure of being on the right track, which is probably the most convincing position a presenter can have: Juan Moreno of PROCASUR outlined his philosophy of development through professional visits. Roberto Haudry, whose PDT recommendation of building community competitions into KWAMP had gotten us here in the first place, gave us the historic context in which the CLARs (Local Resource Allocation Committees) slowly evolved to an approach now fully adopted by government, plus his concept of citizens with democratic and social rights instead of a herd of beneficiaries, and the mistakes they had made of initially not letting the CLARs finance small investments. Finally Ricardo Vergara, a consultant, outlined that the social monitoring by communities is in fact still more valuable than its highly effective allocation of funds. His argument of why a poor farmer is the best decision maker when it comes to investments concerning his livelihood was so clear: because he has a real interest in improving the lives of his family. And that the same farmer is perfectly capable of passing judgement when supervising the implementation: just like anybody can tell whether a doctors’ treatment works or not. It was quite clear, at least in a conference room in Lima, thus no questions for which we also didn’t have any time, honestly, as it was now a quick rush to the airport to catch the flight to Arequipa in the southern highlands. Tomorrow morning it’s breakfast at 6, so we quickly fall into the luxurious beds of the Hotel El Lago.

So far, it couldn’t be more promising. I’m most curious for tomorrow. To be continued.

Claus Reiner, Country Programme Manager for Rwanda