Some climate scientists said it was unfortunate that western Rwanda experienced flooding despite past investments. For example, some experts were previously convinced that Sebeya, one of the rivers originating in the mountains of western Rwanda, was no longer a threat to the community. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, May 19 2023 (IPS)

Following severe flooding and landslides that hit major parts of Rwanda earlier this month, experts are convinced that investing in the mapping of erosion risk areas could go a long way to keeping the number of casualties down.

Many villagers living along major rivers in Western Rwanda have been among the victims of river erosion and flooding every year.

Felicita Mukamusoni, a river erosion survivor in Nyundo, a mountainous village from Western Rwanda, told IPS that “parts of this village have been eroded to such an extent that we cannot even imagine.”

“I reared cows and goats. My beautiful house was destroyed. The river has taken everything,” she said.

Latest Government estimates indicate that at least 135 people died, and one is still missing following recent flooding and landslides triggered by heavy rains that hit western, northern and southern provinces earlier this month.

In a recent assessment, experts found that land in high-risk areas is mainly used for agriculture, and 61 percent was for seasonal crops. It said that seasonal agriculture exposes soil to splash erosion and further detachment as land is not permanently covered.

The 2022 report on the State of Soil Erosion Control in Rwanda indicates that the erosion control techniques across high-risk areas in Rwanda are still very low.

Erosion control mapping shows that of the 30 districts of Rwanda, land under high erosion risk is about 1,080,168 hectares (45 percent of the total provinces land, which is estimated to be 2,385,830 hectares) of which 71,941 hectares (7 percent of the total risk areas) are at extremely high risk.

According to the same report, at least 190,433 hectares of land are considered very high risk (18 percent), 300,805 hectares are at high risk (28 percent), and 516,999 hectares (48 percent) are at moderate risk.

Dr Charles Karangwa, a climate expert based in Kigali, told IPS that It is unfortunate that fresh disasters happened again despite a lot of investment in the past.

“Rwanda needs to explore other complementary solutions such as water management infrastructure, water harvesting, and where possible, relocate those living in highly risky areas to allow nature to regenerate will help to stabilise the situation both in the long term and medium term,” he said.

Apart from being highly populated, Karangwa pointed out that there is quite a link with geographical vulnerability because of soil erosion risk, which is worsened by high population, and this increased pressure on land.

Flood Management and Water Storage Development Division Manager at Rwanda’s Water Resources Board (RWB), Davis Bugingo, told IPS that among solutions to cope with recurrent disasters in Western Rwanda is the establishment of flood control infrastructures to regulate water flow and reduce flooding risks.

These include the construction of the neighbouring Sebeya retention dam, and Gisunyu gully rehabilitation works expected to significantly contribute to reducing flood impacts in the region.

While accurate and up-to-date data on river flow, topography, and flood vulnerability remains crucial for effective flood management, Bugingo observed that limited data availability and quality could pose challenges in accurate flood forecasting, risk assessment, and planning.

Apart from land use, which contributed to increased flood risks, experts observed that constructions in flood-prone areas, encroachments on riverbanks, and inadequate zoning regulations had exacerbated the impact of floods and hindered effective flood management efforts in western Rwanda.

Most recently, RWB has developed a dedicated application to collect more information to inform future analysis, relocation of people living in risky areas, and adjusting tools used to design flood control infrastructure.

The above tool provides information on flood exposure and areas at risk that can be visualised in 3D and shared the information with the public or other organisations. However, experts are convinced that despite these innovative solutions, limited financial resources may hinder the implementation of these large-scale infrastructure projects, such as dams, flood control structures, gully reclamation and drainage systems.

Rwanda is one of Africa’s most densely populated countries, with large concentrations in the central regions and along the shore of Lake Kivu in the west. This East African country’s total area is 26,338 km2, with a population of 13,246,394.

Bugingo points out that inadequate land use still contributes to increased flood risks.

“Constructions in flood-prone areas, encroachments on riverbanks, and inadequate zoning regulations continue to exacerbate the impact of floods and hinder effective flood management efforts,” he said.

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The African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation will be hosted by Rwanda. It is part of the African Development Bank’s commitment to spend at least USD 3 billion over the next ten years to support Africa's pharmaceutical and vaccine manufacturing sector. Medical and pharmaceutical experts pose for a group photo with their colleagues during the forum to introduce the newly launched African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation last month in Kigali. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Jan 25 2023 (IPS)

A few months after German biotechnology company BioNTech announced the establishment of the first-ever local vaccine manufacturing in Rwanda, experts believe the successful implementation of such initiatives across the continent will require countries to acquire know-how while encouraging potential industrial partners in the pharmaceutical industry.

Experts emphasise the need to prioritise technology transfer to revamp Africa’s pharmaceutical industry with a key focus on vaccine manufacturing capacity and building quality healthcare infrastructure.

This is because, while pharmaceutical products are manufactured in countries such as South Africa, Kenya, Morocco and Egypt, the latest estimates by the World Health Organization (WHO) show that the continent currently imports more than 80 percent of its pharmaceutical and medical consumables.

During the forum, which took place recently in Kigali, experts elaborated on some challenges and current opportunities to boost the health prospects of a continent battered for decades by the burden of several diseases and pandemics such as COVID-19, with very limited capacity to produce its medicines and vaccines.

Participants at the forum, which focused mainly on operationalising the first-ever African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation discussed how the African Union should achieve its target of having 60% of vaccines needed on the continent by 2040.

While the continent imports more than 70% of all the medicines it needs, gulping $14 billion annually, Dr Yvan Butera, Rwandan Minister of State in the Minister of Health, emphasised the need to mobilise additional financial resources for African countries that need them most to procure vaccine.

“The new initiative comes as a solution since most of [African] countries still face a challenge in receiving them on time,” the senior Rwandan Government official told the forum.

As current efforts to expand the manufacturing of essential pharmaceutical products, including vaccines, in developing countries, particularly in Africa, experts argue that concerted efforts to promote technology transfer are urgently needed. According to official estimates, Africa imports more than 70% of all the medicines it needs, gulping $14 billion annually.

Commenting on this situation, Professor Padmashree Gehi Sampath, Special Adviser to the President on Pharmaceuticals and Health, African Development Bank and Director of Global Access in Action, Harvard University, told delegates that technology transfer is critical, and the new initiative will help African countries to look at what are their technology needs.

“Most pharmaceutical companies in Africa are using different kinds of technology (…) it is important to boost their capacity, which has been hampered by intellectual property rights protection and patents on technologies, know-how, manufacturing processes and trade secrets,” the senior bank official told IPS.

Yet Africa’s public health challenges are well known; some experts believe that enhancing access to these technologies for pharmaceutical companies is critical to addressing numerous challenges facing the continent’s pharmaceutical industry.

According to Dr Hanan Balkhy, Deputy Director General World Health Organization (WHO), the continent faces many challenges before it can produce its medicines.

“Africa suffers from the repetitive occurrence of preventable diseases and epidemics, and the large part of medicines and vaccines to treat or prevent these diseases are imported from outside the continent,” Balkhy told delegates.

When fully established, the African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation, which the bank has already approved, will be staffed with world-class experts on pharmaceutical innovation and development, intellectual property rights, and health policy.

The foundation also has the mandate as a transparent intermediator advancing and brokering the interests of the African pharmaceutical sector with global and other southern pharmaceutical companies to share IP-protected technologies, know-how and patented processes.

Dr Precious Matsoso, a co-chair of the international negotiating body of the WHO on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response, stressed the importance of ensuring the African health system is resilient.

“Establishing the African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation, by the bank, is a milestone to address these barriers we are facing, such as health equity,” she said.

Although the foundation is being established under the auspices of the African Development Bank, it will operate independently and raise funds from various stakeholders, including governments, development finance institutions, and philanthropic organisations.

Dr Richard Hatchett, Chief Executive Officer of the Coalition of Epidemic Preparedness Initiative (CEPI), told delegates that this foundation was initiated in timeously since Africa needs to learn from the lessons pandemic, which can be an important step to build resilience of its health system.

“These health care innovative solutions will help in saving lives on the continent,” he said.

So far, Rwanda has been selected to host the African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation. A common benefits entity, the foundation will have its own governance and operational structures. It will also promote and broker alliances between foreign and African pharmaceutical companies.

However, some experts also emphasised the need to prioritise the African patent pharmaceutical industry to implement the new initiative successfully.

Professor Carlos Correa, Executive Director, South Centre, Geneva, pointed out that it was important for the region to have their own framework.

“Manufacturing capacity [in Africa] is there, but technology capacity is crucial to develop vaccines for Africa (….) Timely transfer of technology is also important,” he said.

During the forum, some panellists also stressed the need to establish a partnership between African pharmaceutical companies with their counterparts from other continents, such as Europe.

According to Brigit Pickel, Director General for Africa in the Germany Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, this partnership is important for vaccine manufacturing. It applies to the production and supply of other pharmaceutical products.

“We recognise the importance of promoting local pharmaceutical products across the value chain in Africa,” she said.

Apart from technology transfer, Professor Fredrick Abbott, Edward Ball Eminent Scholar Professor, Florida State University, USA, pointed out that this initiative cannot work without sustainable funding.

“Countries need to develop domestic resources because providing funding is a critical step to ensure the continuity of promising clinical development programs of vaccines and drugs,” Abbott told IPS.

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Female workers sort out plastic bottles for recycling in a factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh. New initiatives were launched at the World Circular Economy Forum (WCEF) to reduce plastic pollution. Credit: Abir Abdullah/Climate Visuals Countdown

By Aimable Twahirwa
Kigali, Dec 13 2022 (IPS)

Experts agree that African economies need to develop innovative approaches to deal with plastic production, which is set to double in 20 years – adversely impacting rural communities.

They were speaking in Kigali, Rwanda, on the sidelines of the World Circular Economy Forum (WCEF).

As a result of current global efforts to spur Africa’s transition to a Circular Economy at the country, regional and continental levels, official estimates show that the transition to a fully circular economy could generate $4.5 trillion in economic benefits globally by 2030.

Government representatives, researchers, civil society activists, and strategic partners launched an initiative, the High Ambition Coalition to End Plastics Pollution, on the sidelines of WCEF to end plastic pollution by 2040.

“The issue of plastic pollution has reached crisis levels, and it is time polluters to be held to account,” Zaynab Sadan, the Regional Plastics Policy Coordinator for Africa at World Wildlife Fund (WWF), told IPS.

According to experts, the key to a circular economy in Africa is to eliminate open dumping and burning of waste on the continent and promote the use of waste as a resource for value and job creation.

The latest estimates by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) show that approximately 7 billion of the 9.2 billion tonnes of plastic produced from 1950-2017 globally has become plastic waste, ending in landfills or dumped.

Environmental experts argue that this pollution has altered habitats and natural processes and reduced ecosystems’ ability to adapt to climate change, affecting millions of people’s livelihoods, food production capabilities, and social well-being, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Experts unanimously agree that plastic consumption and production have reached unsustainable levels over the past 30 years, reaching 460 million tonnes between 2000 to 2019.

The 2022 Global Plastics Outlook report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) indicates that much of this growth is mostly driven by massive increases in the production of single-use plastics for packaging and consumer goods, which accounts for half of the plastic waste generation.

To address this growing phenomenon, Sadan insists on the need for African countries to integrate the informal sector into recycling and waste management.

“There is a pressing need to improvement in waste collection services and management at landfills,” the fierce conservation activist told delegates at the launching of the new High Ambition Coalition to end plastic pollution.

Official projections indicate that by 2060, the use of plastics could almost triple globally, driven by economic and population growth.

It said that plastic leakage to the environment is projected to double to 44 million tonnes (Mt) a year, while the build-up of plastics in aquatic environments will more than triple, where the largest costs are projected for Sub-Saharan Africa, whose GDP would be reduced by 2.8% below the baseline.

Kristin Hughes, the director of the resource circularity pillar and a member of the World Economic Forum’s executive committee, told delegates that if current trends continue, billion metric tons of plastic waste will be in landfills or the natural environment by 2050.

“Embedding science and evidence-based approach are key to end plastic pollution in Africa,” Hughes said.

From plastic waste to paving stones. This was a project highlighted at the World Circular Economy Forum in Kigali. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

During various sessions on the forum’s sidelines, Rwanda has been hailed as a role model in Africa toward managing waste from banning plastic bags in 2008, has made great steps forward, and has established the e-waste recycling facility in 2018.

Reacting to this achievement, Rwandan Minister of Environment Jeanne d’Arc Mujawamariya stressed the need for the country to strengthen existing mechanisms to have a carbon-neutral economy by 2050.

“Despite these achievements, there are still shortcomings that are exposing the country to severe impacts of improper waste management, including hazardous wastes,” Mujawamariya told delegates.

Terhi Lehtonen, Finnish Vice Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, is convinced that eradicating plastic pollution requires a systemic approach since plastic pollution is not simply a consumer issue.

“The plastic pollution is increasing at an alarming rate […] African countries need to adopt a holistic control strategy at both production and consumer level,” she told delegates.

The newly-established global mechanism, the High Ambition Coalition to End Plastics Pollution, is committed to developing ambitious international and legally binding instruments based on a comprehensive and circular approach that ensures urgent action and effective action interventions along the full lifecycle of plastics.

Erlend Haugen, Norway’s coordinator of the Global Initiative, said the new treaty must establish provisions for plastic waste minimization and environmentally sound collection, sorting, and preparation for reuse and recycling of plastic waste to re-enter recycled plastics into the economy and avoid leakage to the environment.

But activists are convinced that communities also have vital knowledge and experience that can help combat the scourge of plastic pollution.

“Countries should also adopt a gender-sensitive approach to tackle plastic pollution,” said Sadan.

According to her, the youth could also play a very influential role in plastic waste control by raising awareness about its negative impact.

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Constance Okollet Achom, chair and founder of Osukuru United Women Network (OWN), an organization fighting against domestic violence using climate change solutions in Uganda, during an exclusive interview with IPS at COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
SHARM EL SHEIKH, Nov 23 2022 (IPS)

Constance Okollet Achom, a Ugandan woman from Tororo, a rural village located in Eastern Uganda, has helped several dozens of her peers affected by domestic violence to address the issue by equipping victims with skillsets to manufacture eco-friendly biofuels from agro-forestry waste.

“There have been a growing number of women in my village who experienced intimate partner violence. But they have always accepted to continue bearing the brunt of suffering because of their inability to deal with their finances,” Okollet, who is the chair and founder of Osukuru United Women Network, told IPS. 

With the increasing levels of domestic violence in rural Uganda, Okollet is now championing using climate change solutions to curb its occurrence in this East African nation.

The latest estimates by the World Bank indicate that 51% of African women report that being beaten by their husbands is justified if they burn or refuse to prepare food. Yet acceptance is not uniform across countries. The report shows that the phenomenon appears deeply ingrained in some societies, with a 77% acceptance rate in Uganda.

Okollet’s organization currently empowers and educates women on how climate change affects their village resources. Most importantly, it provides resources for entrepreneurship and counseling to women affected by domestic violence and advocates for their emancipation by empowering them to be self-reliant by becoming green entrepreneurs.

With 2,000 members engaged in various climate solutions, including carbon farming, clean energies, and tree planting, the tradition of abuse has slowly started to fade in rural Uganda as many women who used to depend financially on their husbands have taken bold steps in investing in green projects.

“It has traditionally been regarded as shameful for the male members of a family if a female member works outside of the home and earns a living,” Okollet told IPS on the sidelines of the just concluded global climate summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

To amplify support for women to build climate resilience, the African Development Bank organized the session held during COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh under the theme, “Gender-sensitive and climate just finance mechanisms.”

The panelists said facilities tailored to supporting women, who are helping to build climate resilience, must be visible, simple, and easily accessible.

During the session, the former Irish president and an influential figure in global climate diplomacy, Mary Robinson, pointed out there is not currently an appropriately dedicated climate fund or a permanent climate fund to support women entrepreneurs in combating climate change.

Robinson gave the example of some women-led projects in Uganda which could do ten times more if they had access to targeted climate resources. “They had no prospects of getting the money that could be available for their sector – they didn’t even know who was getting the money or where it was going,” she told delegates.

So far, the bank has earmarked funding for ten capacity-building projects focusing on gender and climate through the Africa Climate Change Fund.

According to Kevin Kariuki, the bank’s Vice President Vice for Power, Energy, Climate, and Green Growth, the new funding mechanism has committed $100 million in loans to public and private sector projects to address gender and climate issues across the continent.

Apart from the new funding scheme launched on the sidelines of COP27, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the African Development Bank Group (AfDB), and the French Development Agency (AFD) in partnership with the Egyptian government also launched the Gender Equality in Climate Action Accelerator.

It is expected that the accelerator will support private sector companies improve the gender responsiveness of their corporate climate governance.

According to the officials, the initiative will help African governments promote gender-sensitive climate sector policies, thereby accelerating their green transition to meet Paris Agreement targets, the UNFCCC’s gender action plan, and key Sustainable Development Goals.

In the meanwhile, Okollet also said that in collaboration with local administrative authorities in her remote rural village in Uganda, she has already trained several hundred women on how to develop green projects so that they become financially independent and confident to face whatever difficulties they may face in life – including domestic violence.

According to her, most rural women in Uganda must wait for their husbands to decide on land management and access, leaving many women underemployed and without any control over productive resources and services.

“These income-generating projects from green initiatives are helping the majority of these women to develop self-sufficiency in their families and stand on their feet,” she said.
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Climate change activists at COP27, Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. Negotiators which struggled to complete reach agreement on the critical loss and damage fund demanded by developing nations most affected by climate change. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
SHARM EL SHEIKH, Nov 20 2022 (IPS)

After a tense impasse and many hours of negotiations, almost 200 countries struck a deal to set up a loss and damage fund to assist nations worst hit by climate change – a demand considered not-negotiable by the developing countries.

COP27 was extended by a day after negotiators couldn’t agree on the fund – leading to UN Secretary-General António Guterres saying on Friday, November 18, 2022, that the time for talking about loss and damage finance is over. He alluded to a growing breakdown of trust between developing and developed countries.

Guterres, early on Sunday, November 20, 2022, welcomed the fund saying: “I welcome the decision to establish a loss and damage fund and to operationalize it in the coming period. Clearly, this will not be enough, but it is a much-needed political signal to rebuild broken trust.”

He added that the voices of those on the frontlines of the climate crisis must be heard.

Speaking in the closing plenary, COP President H.E. Sameh Shoukry said:

“The work that we’ve managed to do here in the past two weeks, and the results we have together achieved, are a testament to our collective will, as a community of nations, to voice a clear message that rings loudly today, here in this room and around the world: that multilateral diplomacy still works… despite the difficulties and challenges of our times, the divergence of views, level of ambition or apprehension, we remain committed to the fight against climate change… we rose to the occasion, upheld our responsibilities and undertook the important decisive political decisions that millions around the world expect from us.”

Shoukry noted: “This was not easy. We worked around the clock. Long days and nights. Strained and sometimes tense, but united and working for one aim, one higher purpose, one common goal that we all subscribe to and aspire to achieve. In the end, we delivered.”

Under the previous global climate summit, which took place in Glasgow, Scotland last year, parties agreed on the roadmap where developing countries, which did little to cause the climate crisis, arrived with a determination to win a commitment from rich nations to compensate them for this damage.

On several occasions during negotiations, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, also the COP27 President, stated that climate finance remains key for Africa since the continent contributes 4 percent to global emissions and is adversely affected to a much higher degree by global warming-relate events.

On losses and damages, some climate finance experts believe that ongoing climate talks on finance at COP27 are one of the most painful examples of the African proverb that when the elephants fight, it is the grass that gets trampled.

“Ongoing negotiations on loss and damage are the most recent iteration of this long-standing fight,” Sophia Murphy, the Executive Director of the US-based Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), told IPS.

Delegates debate climate finance on the sidelines of COP27 at Sharm El Sheikh. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

IATP is a think tank that analyses the interconnection between agriculture, trade, and climate in developing countries.

Since 2015, loss and damage have served as the main catalyser under the UNFCCC process, especially for enhancing financial support for adaptation to avert, minimise and address climate change impacts in developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.

Murphy pointed out that the G77 includes a very wide range of countries and interests, and the climate crisis is not suffered equally across the South.

“Currently developing nations at COP27 are likely showing that everyone is responsible for the negative realities of climate change and loss and damage negotiations is the most recent iteration of this long-standing fight,” she said.

While many negotiators in Sharm El Sheikh believe that rich countries are lagging in measures to allocate loss and damage funding, there is a consensus that the current negotiations on climate finance did not go very well, particularly with respect to the expectations for COP27.

Dr Somorin Olufunso, Regional Principal Officer, Climate Change and Green Growth (East Africa) at the African Development Bank, told IPS that the finance negotiation is primarily a “trust” negotiation.

“Unfortunately, if the trust is broken, it may affect other issues being negotiated and ultimately affect our collective action of combatting climate change,” the senior financial expert said.

The bank published the 2022 African Economic Outlook report on the needs of African Countries for loss and damage in 2022-2030 at between USD 289.2 to USD 440.5 billion. The estimated adaptation finance needs are in a similar order of magnitude.

For many Africans, according to Olufunso, the negotiations were not aggressive enough in finding solutions urgently needed at both scale and speed.

Until the end of the summit, loss and damage fund remained a major sticking point.

“Negotiations are going well in some items and not well in other items (…) Rwanda and other vulnerable countries had much expectation in securing a decision of adopting the establishment of loss and damage fund,” Faustin Munyazikwiye, the Deputy Director General of Rwanda Environmental Management Authority (REMA) and Rwanda’s Lead negotiator, told IPS in an interview.

According to him, this item [on loss and damage] did not go well.

African negotiators at COP27 prioritised filling gaps between present risks associated with climate change and financing for adaptation.

However, most developing countries prefer to ensure that finance for loss and damages is channelled through the private sector and is not necessarily a liability for rich countries.

But other experts believe that cost of repairing these damages is staggering and the countries which should pay are the ones who contributed to climate change in the first place.

While some climate finance experts observe that the commitment by rich nations to pay the developing world $100 billion cannot even compensate what Africa’s needs, others point out that COP27 must deliver a bold finance facility to pay for loss and damage to communities already impacted by climate change on the continent.

Kelly Dent, the Global Director of External Engagement at the UK-based World Animal Protection, told IPS most vulnerable countries, mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa, are considering the climate emergency as a matter of life.

“Without a coherent and meaningful agreement on finance, COP27 will fall short of its mission and put millions of lives at risk,” she said.

From Dent’s perspective, a roadmap to track and deliver a doubling of adaptation finance is critical.

The 2022 UNEP’s Adaptation Gap Report, released on the sidelines of COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, indicates that the continent requires 7 to 15 billion US dollars annually to enhance adaptation to climate change besides the nearly 3 trillion dollars investment that is needed to implement nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and cap emissions in line with the Paris climate deal.

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Activists say governments should be urgedto put agriculture onto the negotiating table at COP27 especially to diverse,resilient agroecological farming are crucial for farmers which will enablefarmers to adapt to climate chaos. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
SHARM EL SHEIKH, Nov 17 2022 (IPS)

At a time when sustainable farming approaches such as agroecology have been removed from the text at ongoing global climate negotiation (COP27) taking place in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, activists are urging African governments to explore new steps to integrate agriculture into the UN climate agreement.

According to the most recent assessment of climate impacts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), loss and damage can broadly be split into two categories: economic losses involving “income and physical assets”; and non-economic losses, which include – but are not limited to – “mortality, mobility and mental wellbeing losses”.

Million Belay, the Alliance for Food Sovereignty coordinator in Africa, says green revolution solutions have failed the continent. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

In the agriculture sector, estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) indicate that despite overall gains in food production and food security on a global scale, many countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, have failed to make progress in recent decades.

According to UN experts, the region produces less food per person today than it did three decades ago, and the number of chronically undernourished people has increased dramatically.

“This must change because many of Africa’s agricultural and food security problems have been related to misguided policies, weak institutions in the context of climate crisis,” said Million Belay, the Alliance for Food Sovereignty coordinator in Africa (AFSA).

Belay pointed out that the industrial food system is a major culprit driving climate change but is still not being taken seriously by climate talks.

“Real solutions like diverse, resilient agroecological farming are crucial for farmers [in Africa] to adapt to climate chaos, but they are being sidelined and starved of climate finance,” he told IPS on the sidelines of COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.

While COP27 in Egypt is trying to address food systems, for the first time, new suggested solutions by multinational companies and global philanthropists by providing new technologies and systems that reward African farmers for mitigating emissions have become a new point of anxiety among climate activists.

The industrial food systems such as monocultures, high-fertilizer and chemical use are described by experts as an enormous driver of climate change in Africa, while small-scale, agroecological farming and indigenous systems comparatively have significantly less GHG emissions and can even work to sequester carbon in healthy ecosystems.

“Historically, these philanthropists and multinationals have been considering Africa as a continent facing an agriculture productivity crisis, yet the serious problem is instead related to resilience crisis,” Belay said.

As global warming patterns continue to shift and natural resources dwindle, agroecology is considered by climate experts as the best path forward for feeding the continent. Most experts agree that under current growth rates, Africa’s population will double by 2050 and then double again by 2100, eventually climbing to over 4 billion by the end of the century.

The latest estimates by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) show that feeding this growing population will require significant advancements in Africa’s food systems.

Martin Fregene, the Director of Agriculture and Agro-Industry at the African Development Bank, told delegates at COP27 that the power of agricultural technologies to raise productivity and combat malnutrition on the continent are desperately needed.

Speaking during a session that focused on major solutions for a sustainable Agriculture sector in Africa, Fregene pointed out that the inadequate public investment in agricultural research, training and infrastructure and the limited mobilization of the private sector are some major contributing factors to food insecurity affecting Africa because of Climate Change.

In May this year, the African Development Bank launched an African Emergency Food Production Facility to provide 20 million African smallholder farmers with seeds and access to fertilizers in a bid to enable them to rapidly produce 38m tons of food – a $12bn increase in production in two years.

The programme aims especially at providing direct subsidies to farmers to buy fertilizer and other inputs, as well as financing large importers of fertilizer to source supply from other regions.

While climate-induced shocks to the food system used to occur once every ten years on average in Africa, experts show that they are now happening every 2.5 years.

Estimates show by 2050, warming of just 1.2 to 1.9℃, well within the range of current IPCC projections, is likely to increase the number of malnourished in Africa by 25 to 95 percent–25 percent in central Africa, 50 percent in east Africa, 85 percent in southern Africa and 95 percent in west Africa.

Both activists and climate experts agree that the public sector in most parts of sub-Saharan Africa can do more to engage the private sector to ensure that smallholder farmers are taking ownership of established adaptation strategies.

Matthias Berninger, the senior Vice-President of Global Public and Government Affairs at Bayer, a global Life Science company with core competencies in the areas of health care and agriculture, told IPS that yet there are positive examples showing how the private sector is getting involved in agricultural adaptation to climate change in sub-Saharan Africa, there is still a long way to go.

“The continent has adaptation projects that are now demonstrating their potential, but there is still a pressing need to reshape Africa’s food system to be more resilient, productive and inclusive,” Berninger said.

A new study by researchers from Biovision, the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) and the United Kingdom-based Institute of Development Studies shows that such sustainable and regenerative farming techniques have either been neglected, ignored, or disregarded by major donors.

One of the major findings is that most governments, especially in Sub-Saharan still favour “green revolution” approaches, believing that chemical-intensive, large-scale industrial agriculture is the only way to produce sufficient food. “Green revolution solutions have failed,” said Belay.

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The Congo-Rwanda border bustles with traders going between the two countries but is also a conduit for criminal syndicates to smuggle elephant tusks and other contraband. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
RUBAVU, Northwestern Rwanda, Oct 21 2022 (IPS)

Every morning, Valerie Mukamazimpaka, a businesswoman selling various food products from Rubavu, a district in Northwestern Rwanda, wakes up early morning to cross “Petite Barrière,” one of the busiest border crossings with the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The mother of three takes advantage of the ‘Jeton,’ a daily authorization paper allowing individuals to move within the municipal limits of the border towns of Rubavu, Rwanda, and the frenetic city of Goma from North Kivu Province in the eastern part of DRC.

All day long, a constant stream of trade crisscrosses between the two countries, with people like Mukamazimpaka carrying bags of fruits, vegetables, and other products for business purposes on their backs or heads.

With over 55,000 legal crossings daily, “Petite Barrière” is described as the busiest land border between Rwanda and DR Congo under the strict supervision of law enforcement officers and customer agents whose duties primarily investigate and apprehend suspected smugglers.

“There are villagers around here who are sometimes forced to use porous entry points to avoid the risk of detection and apprehension because of moving smuggled goods such as ivory tusks mixed with other business commodities,” she told IPS.

In these remote villages across the transborder region, the modus operandi of ivory tusks smugglers is diverse. While some traffickers that smuggle ivory often deal in other illegal goods. Other highly sophisticated networks use social media platforms for advertising wildlife products online and finding buyers in their target market abroad.

While large-scale illegal wildlife crime is not prominent in Rwanda, conservation experts observe that Rwanda is a strategically relevant country in the illicit trade of wildlife products because it is nestled between several important sources, transit, and destination countries.

The use of social media has allowed smugglers of wildlife products to expand their network’s reach using Rwanda as a transit route, experts say.

According to Rwanda Wildlife Conservation Association, because the illegal wildlife trade, such as in ivory tusks, constantly evolves, the country needs law enforcement capacity building for police, customs, and judiciary personnel. It is also crucial that a national database for wildlife crime cases is set up and local communities are made aware of the penalties for wildlife crime.

Last year Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) arrested four people for allegedly trafficking products from endangered animals, such as elephant ivory.

According to Dr Thierry Murangira, RIB Spokesperson, the suspects were caught while using Rwanda as a transit country to smuggle 45 kilograms of ivory from the DRC to Asian countries.

The ring of smugglers had been using Facebook to connect with their accomplices who were still at large on the other side of the border. The case exposed that smuggling syndicates are now utilizing media platforms as an intermediate tool to connect buyers from Asia and buyers from DRC as the primary source market.

During a field investigation conducted on a freezing cold evening in Busasamana, a remote village from Rubavu, a district located at the border with the DRC, this reporter spotted residents who disguised themselves as farmers while waiting impatiently for potential customers looking to move goods using porous routes in their illegal cross-border trade to Rwanda.

A trader, who identified himself as Habanabakize, says his business is transporting goods on his wheelbarrow and moving smuggled goods to survive.

Investigations conducted by this reporter have demonstrated the role of social media platforms as a means for smugglers to connect and use locals to move ivory tusks across the border.

“People here are sometimes forced to take increasingly hazardous paths to cross the border because they are looking to make a living,” Habanabakize told IPS in an interview.

Online tools

Across these transborder areas, organized wildlife smuggling is severely threatening the survival of some of the most threatened species, including elephant ivory from Eastern DRC, where smugglers use technology to control their business remotely, according to the latest report by TRAFFIC, an international organization engaged in the fight against wildlife trade.

One of the investigations conducted by this reporter found that despite efforts by local administrative officials, customers, and border patrol agents in chasing smugglers, individuals engaged in this highly profitable illegal business use any online tools available to them.

But to move smugglers’ items to their destination, traffickers advertise wildlife products by messaging thousands of people through Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp using anonymous accounts to control their illegal business using remote surveillance.

Aimable Twahirwa struck up a conversation with a smuggler during his investigation. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

This helps them connect with wildlife hunters and their informants on the other side of the border before engaging with potential customers through social media and chat rooms to sell elephant tusks, the typical commodity being illegally trafficked to consumers, particulars from parts of Asia.

Online payment methods

Most criminal syndicates rely on established methods such as placement and laundering of funds through formal financial institutions, which are undertaken through various online payment methods.

According to Rwanda’s National Public Prosecutor Authority (NPPA), money launderers, who play a significant role in the illegal wildlife trade, use smart techniques and utilize complex sequences of banking transfers or commercial transactions, which cannot be easily detected or traced.

Jean Bosco Murenzi, head of the Compliance and Prevention Department of Rwanda’s Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC), says that the cooperation and information exchange with Financial Intelligence Centres from other countries remains key to cracking down on such financial cheating where it is common to launder money through online and social media platforms.

With the establishment of the FIC in August 2020, financial institutions in the country can now submit suspicious transaction reports to the center, which also has the authority to exchange information with its peers from other countries.

Through this regional partnership, Rwanda and Kenya signed an agreement of cooperation in July this year, focusing on areas of information sharing about money laundering.

In many countries across the East African region, including Rwanda, conservation experts believe that the rise of e-commerce has made illegal wildlife trade online more hidden and more difficult to track and monitor.

East Africa’s judicial and procuratorial organs stepped up efforts in March to deepen their cross-border collaboration on ‘asset recovery’ – taking back the proceeds of wildlife crime and ending the money laundering that allows ill-gotten gains to be used for profitable investments. According to Paul Kadushi, Director, Asset Forfeiture, Transnational and Specialized Crimes Division, National Prosecutions Service of Tanzania, wildlife crime is leading to the proliferation of guns in the region.

During the investigation, the writer asked to join one of the Facebook buy/sell groups that focus on selling a wide array of items, with among products available for purchase sellers claimed were ivory.

After placing an order for ivory tusks on Facebook, the writer was prompted to a separate online form requesting him to fill in contact details, including phone number, and he was asked to pay with Mobile Money. The writer did not proceed.

Social media is the new medium that connects illegal elephant tusk traders with their markets. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

However, a few minutes later, the writer received a call from an anonymous number introducing himself as an agent from a registered company without elaborating on the name of the business and address location.

Criminal syndicates

Conservation experts believe that today’s trade of wildlife products across the East African region has shifted from physical markets to online marketplaces where traffickers apply e-commerce business models and use encrypted messages to evade detection by law enforcement.

“By their organization, they are very highly sophisticated criminal networks, and they are very difficult to detect, and a lot of it is being sold over the internet now,” said Dr Katherine Chase Snow, founder of Gaia Morgan group, a US-based non-profit conservation intelligence consultancy.

The latest report released by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) shows that the increased involvement of organized crime groups has changed the dynamics needed to address wildlife crime, especially across the East African region.

Reports show that the Internet has become a prime outlet to advertise and arrange sales, including of wildlife specimens, both legally and illegally.

A TRAFFIC report released in July 2020 indicated that 8,508 ivory items, from elephant tusks to jewelry and decorative items, were posted for sale on 1,559 Facebook and Instagram accounts in major countries across Asia in 2016.

According to Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB), most smugglers now use social media to find new ways to connect with potential customers and hide their real identities from the police.

Meantime, Interpol also says that traffickers take advantage of different social media platforms to advertise and sell wildlife and wildlife products online.

Gaining access to a vast international marketplace and following the same routes as other crimes such as drugs and weapons smuggling, wildlife trafficking is rising 5% to 7% annually, it said.

Online advertising 

Andrew McVey, climate advisor at World Wildlife Fund (WWF), stresses the need to have a greater public perception that wildlife crime is actually a serious and organized crime.

“Online advertising has been the main tactic used by wildlife traffickers, but still, Governments need to do more routine surveillance of the internet,” McVey said.

Fidele Ruzigandekwe, the Deputy Executive Secretary for Programs at the Rwandan-based Greater Virunga Transboundary Collaboration (GVTC), observes in an interview that current efforts to combat wildlife crime should not solely be linked to anti-poaching and law enforcement activities in each specific country across the region.

GVTC is an interstate collaboration toward sustainable conservation in the Virunga landscape, which stretches along the borders of Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

“There is a need for transborder consultation between relevant organs within the partner states to crackdown illegal wildlife crimes that are now relying on sophisticated technologies,” Ruzigandekwe said.

Note: Earth Journalism Network provided support for this investigation.

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Leonida Odongo, an activist from Kenya’s Haki Nawiri Africa, and Global Development and Environment Institute fellow Dr Timothy Wise agree that Africa’s food systems revolution should not be based on costly imports. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
Kigali, Sep 12 2022 (IPS)

The 2022 Africa Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) Summit ended in Kigali, Rwanda, with policymakers, activists, researchers, business leaders, and agricultural experts divided over the right pace to build resilient agri-food systems on the continent.

While some believe that mobilizing private and public investments, innovations, and country-based solutions is still crucial to moving forward the transformation of Africa’s food systems, others observe that the agricultural revolution on the continent needs to start from the bottom up, from the inside out, starting with small-scale farmers.

“The Green Revolution is an imported, top-down approach reliant on imported fertilizers and other inputs,” Dr Timothy Wise, a Senior Research Fellow at the Global Development and Environment Institute of the US-based Tufts University, told IPS.

Wise adds that the bias in public policies toward the private sector works against small-scale farmers, even though they, too, are technically part of the private sector.

“Markets [in Africa] can benefit farmers, and farmers need fair markets, but they cannot be dominated by large corporations and middlemen,” he says.

Latest estimates by the African Development Bank (AfDB) show that for the green revolution to happen in Africa, there is an urgent necessity to increase productivity and to move up the value chain into processed foods. Africa cannot feed itself while getting only a quarter of its potential yields and without processing what it grows, the bank says.

Africa’s green revolution’s main purpose is to transform African agriculture from a subsistence model to strong businesses that improve the livelihoods of millions of small-scale farmers across the continent.

The ambitious plan, according to officials, aims especially at advancing the commitments made at the Malabo Heads of State Summit and working hard to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals with a focus on improving the income and productivity of farmers with concrete actions that can build sustainable and resilient food systems to feed nearly 256 million reportedly suffering from severe food insecurity on the African continent.

While the Malabo declaration, to be attained by 2025, stresses concerns over Africa’s growing dependence on foreign markets for food security, arguably due to changes in consumption patterns, some experts believe that African Governments need to promote territorial markets that provide a level playing field to small-scale agroecological producers and entrepreneurs.

The Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP), one of the continental frameworks under Agenda 2063 of the African Union to help countries eliminate hunger and reduce poverty by raising economic growth through agriculture-led development, but activists say there remains much unexploited intra-African trade in agricultural commodities.

According to the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), an organization that brings together small-scale farmers from across Africa advocating for food sovereignty, seed and trade issues are highly politicized and complicated on the continent with a lot of baggage to unpack.

Africa is on the verge of losing its diverse crop varieties due to restrictive and draconian laws that prohibit the centuries-old free exchange of seeds between farmers, it said.

With the importation of seeds in the name of high-yielding and climate-smart varieties becoming common policy for most countries; activists point out that their performance is intricately and heavily dependent on the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides.

In a brief interview with IPS, activists from AFSA said the adoption of these solutions in most African countries has proved ineffective because they end up creating dependency among farmers, forcing them to lose their own farmer varieties, and forcing them only to plant monocultures, all of which contribute to food insecurity.

The most pronounced opposition came from Leonida Odongo, an activist from Kenya Haki Nawiri Africa, who observed that thousands of hectares of land in Africa are owned or leased to plantations that grow what is not eaten on the continent.

The major challenge, according to Odongo, is that most of the western companies producing seeds and agrochemicals come to convince African farmers to buy seeds and chemicals, and, in some cases, they get these as loans in form of these imported agricultural inputs.

“If Green Revolution is working for Africa, why are the rates of hunger soaring, and if climate-smart technologies are working, why does Africa continue to be ravaged by droughts?” she asked.

Both Odongo and Tim are convinced that the kind of intensification Africa’s small-scale farmers need is ecological, not based on the adoption of costly inputs.

This is because subsidizing purchases of expensive inputs, which are two to three times more expensive, and which are derived from fossil fuels, as is the current case in most African countries, is bound to fail.

While reacting to the current efforts to achieve food security in Africa, Hailemariam Desalegn, the former Prime Minister of Ethiopia and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) chair, noted that while some African countries have shown commitment to support food systems transformation, collective action would be needed to accelerate progress and real change.

“African governments should lead these efforts by prioritizing and integrating policies […] that call for healthy and nutritious diets, decent income for the farmers, and that address climate fragility,” Desalegn told delegates at the AGRF summit.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame agreed; he noted that Africa should not be struggling with food insecurity, given “our” natural endowments.

“By transforming food systems [in Africa], we can feed ourselves, and even feed others,” Kagame said.

With current preferential trade liberalization through the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCTA), some members of the business community observed that there were still challenges to linking food-deficit areas with food-surplus areas across the continent.

Latest estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) indicate that Africa is a net food-importing region of commodities such as cereals, meat, dairy products, fats, oils, and sugar, importing about USD 80 billion worth of agricultural and food products annually.

Gilbert Musonda, an agribusiness manager from Zambia who processes oil from sunflower, told IPS that in his experience, smallholder farmers are the first ones to be part of the solution, but also governments should support the private sector and ensure there are dynamic regional markets established.

African Heads of State and governments are committed in 2014 to triple intra-African trade in agricultural commodities and services by the year 2025. Recent evidence by the World Bank suggests that the export of agro-processed and other value-added goods made in Africa is greater in regional markets than in external markets outside Africa

“There is still an urgent need to invest in agribusiness in order to sustainable Africa’s food systems,” Musonda told IPS.

With a new five-year strategy adopted on the sidelines summit in Kigali to build Africa’s food system, activists say there is little attention to farmers’ needs.

“The anecdotal evidence from farmers in Africa shows that the promises of high yields distribution are not working,” says Odongo.
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Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT (ABC) are using artificial intelligence to help eradicate Banana Bunchy Top Disease (BBTD). The disease threatens the livelihoods of farmers and impacts food security. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Aug 5 2022 (IPS)

A group of scientists involved in finding solutions to minimize the impact of a devastating banana virus in Burundi have developed an Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool for monitoring the disease.

United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) research shows that the Banana Bunchy Top Disease (BBTD), caused by the Banana Bunchy Top Virus (BBTV), is endemic in many banana-producing countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

The virus was first reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in the 1950s and has become invasive and spread into 15 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

The disease has been reported in Angola, Benin, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, DRC, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, and Zambia. The latest findings, however, show that BBTD is currently a major threat to banana cultivation and a threat to over 100 million people for whom the banana is a staple food.

The AI development team, led jointly by Dr Guy Blomme and his colleague Dr Michael Gomez Selvaraj from the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT (ABC), tested the detection of banana plants and their major diseases through aerial images and machine learning methods.

This project aimed to develop an AI-based banana disease and pest detection system using a Deep Convolutional Neural Network (DCNN) to support banana farmers.

A graphic shows the impact of Banana Bunchy Top Disease (BBTD). Credit: Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT (ABC)

While farmers struggle to defend their crops from pests, scientists from ABC have created an easy-to-use tool to detect banana pests and diseases.

The tool, which has proven to provide a 90 percent success in detection in some countries, such as the DRC and Uganda, is an important step towards creating a satellite-powered, globally connected network to control disease and pest outbreaks, say the researchers.

During the testing phase, in collaboration with a team from the national agricultural research organization of Burundi – ISABU, two sites where the banana bunchy top disease is endemic in Cibitoke Province were compared with an area free of the disease in Gitega Province (Central).

Cibitoke Province is BBTD endemic and lies in a frontier zone bordering Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Performance and validation metrics were also computed to measure the accuracy of different models in automated disease detection methods by applying state-of-the-art deep learning techniques to detect visible banana disease and pest symptoms on different parts of the plant.

Researchers set out the reasons detecting disease in bananas is so vital.

“In East and Central Africa, it is a substantial dietary component, accounting for over 50% of daily total food intake in parts of Uganda and Rwanda.”

Bananas are also the dominant crop in Burundi. The surface area under cultivation is estimated at 200,000 to 300,000 ha, representing 20 to 30% of the agricultural land.

Data from Burundi’s Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock indicate food security and nutrition continue to worsen, with 21 percent of the population food insecure. They say this could be exacerbated by various plant diseases such as BBTD.

While banana is crucial to people’s food security and livelihoods, experts also argue that BBTD could potentially have a devastating economic and social impact on the continent.

“Based on the fact that when BBTD comes in, it is initially a very cryptic disease and does not display spectacular symptoms,” Bonaventure Omondi, a CGIAR researcher who collaborated on this project and who works on related banana diseases and seed systems projects, told IPS in an interview. While it was crucial to stop the disease early, it was also challenging, which is why the AI solution was vital.

Agriculture experts say that the East African Highlands is the zone of secondary diversity of a type of bananas called the AAA-EA types. These bananas are genetically close to the dessert banana types but have been selected for use as beer, cooking, and dessert bananas.

Banana cultivation in Burundi is grouped into three different categories. Banana for beer/wine in which juice is extracted and fermented accounts for around 77 percent of the national production by volume. Fourteen percent of bananas are grown for cooking, and finally, about five percent are dessert bananas which are ripened and directly consumed.

With recent advances in machine learning, researchers were convinced that new disease diagnosis based on automated image recognition was technically feasible.

“Minimizing the effects of disease threats and keeping a matrix mixed landscaped of banana and non-banana canopy is a key step in managing a large number of diseases and pests,” Omondi said.

As an example of how this emerging technology works, researchers focus on data sets depicted on banana crops with disease symptoms and established algorithms to help identify plantations where the disease is present.

Prosper Ntirampeba, a banana grower from Cibitoke Province in north-western Burundi, told IPS that he harvested fewer bunches of bananas in the latest season because of BBTD that spread through his farmlands.

“We have been forced to uproot infected plants since this disease reached our main production area. This resulted in a huge extra cost burden,” he said.

In another case, with the detection of BBTD, agricultural officials under instruction from researchers advised farmers to remove all infected ‘mats’ where several hectares of diseased plants had been destroyed. This is the key to eliminating the disease in Busoni, a remote rural village in Northern Burundi.

Although some farmers often resist uprooting their banana plants, Ntirampeba said it was vital to eliminating the disease.

“The disease is likely threatening livelihoods of most farmers who are dependent on the crop,” he told IPS.

Currently, other novel disease surveillance methods are also being developed by ABC researchers in Burundi, including drone-based surveillance to determine local disease risk and delimit recovery areas.

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The Africa Protected Areas Congress (APAC), the first-ever continent-wide gathering of African leaders, citizens, and interest groups, gathered in Kigali from Monday, Jul 18 to Jul 23 to discuss the role of protected areas in conserving nature. Rwanda hosted the conference in partnership with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF). CREDIT: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
Kigali, Jul 21 2022 (IPS)

For many years, East African countries were considered wildlife trafficking hotspots. Now conservation organisations have started to mobilise all stakeholders to combat the illegal trade that targets animals – some to the edge of extinction.

“A slight progress has been made in combatting the illicit trade of wildlife and their products, but Governments from the region still face grave challenges posed by the fact that they are mostly single-species focused on their conservation efforts,” Andrew McVey, climate advisor at World Wildlife Fund (WWF) from East African region told IPS.

According to experts, while countries are committed to cooperation and collaboration to combat poaching and illegal wildlife trafficking within the shared ecosystems, organised criminal networks are cashing in on elephant poaching. Trafficking ivory has reached unprecedented volumes, and syndicates are operating with impunity and little fear of prosecution.

Delegates at the first Africa Protected Areas Congress (APAC) noted the lack of strict sanctions and penalties for illegal activities and limited disincentives to prevent poaching, trafficking or illicit trade impacted efforts to counter wildlife trafficking across the region. The gathering in Kigali was organised by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Fidele Ruzigandekwe, the Deputy Executive Secretary for Programs at the Rwandan-based Greater Virunga Transboundary Collaboration (GVTC), told IPS that sharing information, community empowerment and enforcing laws and judiciary system were among crucial factors needed to slow the illegal trade of wildlife. The GVTC is a conservation NGO working in Greater Virunga Landscape across transborder zones between Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

“There is also a need to rely on technology such as high-tech surveillance devices to combat wildlife poachers and traffickers,” Ruzigandekwe added.

Elephant tusks are of high value in the Far East, particularly in China, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia, where many use them for ornamentation and religious purposes. Both scientists and activists believe that despite current mobilisation, the demand is still increasing as transnational syndicates involved in wildlife crime are exploiting new technologies and networks to escape from arrests, prosecutions, or convictions

Although some experts were delighted to note that countries had made some progress in cooperating to fight trans-border wildlife trafficking, estimates by NGO TRAFFIC indicate that about 55 African Elephants are poached on the continent every day.

INTERPOL has identified East Africa as one of several priority regions for enhanced law enforcement responses to ivory trafficking.

Reports by the INTERPOL indicate that law enforcement officials recently discovered an illegal shipment of ivory inside shipping containers, primarily from Tanzania. It was to be transported to Asian maritime transit hubs.

Both scientists and decision-makers unanimously agreed on the need to mobilise more funding to support measures to tackle ivory trafficking.

“Duplication of conservation efforts and inadequate collaboration among countries has been one of the greatest challenges to implementation,” Simon Kiarie, Principal Tourism Officer at the East African Community (EAC) Secretariat, told IPS.

To cope with these challenges, member countries of the EAC, including Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi, South Sudan, and Rwanda, have jointly developed a Regional Strategy to Combat Poaching and Illegal Trade and Tra­cking of Wildlife and Wildlife Products which is being implemented at the regional and national levels.

The strategy revolves around six key pillars, including strengthening policy framework, enhancing law enforcement capacity, research and development, involvement of local communities and supporting regional and international collaboration.

During a session on the sidelines of the congress, many delegates expressed strong feelings that when the elephant population is threatened by poaching, local communities suffer too.

“Through the illegal trade in wildlife, local communities lose socially and economically important resources (…) the benefits from illegal wildlife trade are not shared among communities,” Telesphore Ngoga, a conservation analyst at Rwanda Development Board (RDB), a government body with conservation in its mandate told IPS.

The Rwandan Government introduced a Tourism Revenue Sharing programme in 2005 to share a percentage (currently 10%) of the total tourism park revenues with the communities living around the parks.

The major purpose of this community initiative is to encourage environmental and wildlife conservation and give back to the communities living near parks, who are socially and economically impacted by wildlife and other touristic endeavours.

Manasseh Karambizi, a former elephant poacher from Kayonza, a district in Eastern Rwanda, who became a park ranger, told IPS that after being sensitised about the dangers of wildlife hunting, he is now aware of the benefits of wildlife conservation.

“Thanks to the income generated from tourism activities from the neighbouring national park, communities are benefiting a lot. I am now able to feed my family, and my children are going to school,” the 46-year-old father of five said.

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Ingabire Muziga Mamy, Managing Director, Charis Unmanned Aerial Solutions Rwanda, provides drone services for spraying gardens with pesticides, among other farming activities in Rwanda. Technology is crucial to improving food security, researchers say. CREDIT: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Jun 15 2022 (IPS)

A few years ago, after coming up with a project of launching the first-ever unmanned aerial systems (UAS) in Rwanda, entrepreneur Mamy Muziga Ingabire identified the need to provide farmers with information related to their activity – such as the health status of crops.

“Major focus was to leverage drone technology to support smallholder farmers in increasing their productivity,” Muziga told IPS in a recent interview.

Muziga is the Managing Director of CHARIS Unmanned Vehicle Solutions, one of the Rwandan-based companies providing drone-based solutions.

Several solutions and applications have been introduced to provide Rwandan farmers with innovative technology for accessing timely information on climate change, crop health, and diseases affecting them for informed decisions. Using ICTs gives farmers more access to market information, weather, and nutrition.

Several solutions have developed during the implementation phase, including the project for the Nitrogen fertilisation of wheat crops using drone technology in Musanze, a district in Northern Rwanda.

A drone with fixed cameras and sensors is sent across the field, takes accurate images of the plantations and the land, and collects precise data. This data provides specific indicators that enable operators to know the crop’s health and what it needs as fertilizer to grow properly.

While entrepreneurs and officials hail gains smallholder farmers enjoy by using these technological solutions for a sustainable food value chain; researchers say it’s important to raise awareness about what these technologies can do for actors along the agriculture value chains.

The importance of science, technology, and innovation (STI) as an important driver of African integration was the main topic of a recent scientific conference in Kigali, Rwanda, attracting researchers, members of the private sector, civil society, and farmers’ organisations from across Africa.

The conference focused on new applications such as drones, precision agriculture, and mobile applications or other hardware systems to automate redundant processes and reduce dependency on human labour in the agriculture value chain.

To bridge the STI policy and practice gaps to transform agricultural development and food systems within the continent, researchers agreed that the current impacts of climate change on food security in Africa should not allow anyone to relax.

Dr Canisius Kanangire, the Executive Director African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), observed that agriculture in Africa is [still] characterised by low productivity, reflected in insufficient food production.

“We need to find the innovative solutions to key issues affecting food systems (…) Climate change is still having a growing impact on the African continent, hitting the most vulnerable hardest, and contributing to food insecurity,” Dr Kanangire told IPS.

While researchers seek to enhance the utilisation and adoption of productivity-enhancing technologies, value-adding processes, and loss-reducing practices among smallholder farmers in Africa, some experts in food systems believe that scaling these innovative solutions is still challenging.

“It is not only for the scientific community to develop solutions, but there is also a way to look at how end users can cope with these technologies,” said Claver Ruzindaza, an agricultural extension professional in Kigali.

With current efforts to deliver hi-tech services through public and private partnerships, researchers seek to equip smallholder farmers in Africa with knowledge of agronomic techniques and skills to improve their productivity, food security and livelihoods using innovative technologies.

“We need to change this narrative which maintains the [African] farmer into the poverty status at a point where a farmer is always synonymous to a poor person,” Kanangire said.

Despite the vast agricultural potential, the latest estimates by the African Development Bank indicate that African countries are experiencing one of the highest prevalence of undernourishment in the world. Official reports show that out of about 795 million people suffering from chronic undernourishment globally, 220 million live in Africa.

Nevertheless, AAFT has developed seed varieties that are more productive and resistant to diseases and droughts, which could increase farm productivity and food availability on the continent has been executed in Malawi and Zimbabwe, while it is currently being expanded in Uganda and Ghana.

Martin Bwalya, Acting Director for Knowledge Management and Programme Evaluation at the Africa Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD), told IPS that Africa needs to adopt innovations to reduce reliance on food imports.

“The continent is highly vulnerable because we are importing a massive amount. Close to 30 per cent of food in the continent is being imported,” Bwalya said.

As current efforts focus on mitigating the commodity disruptions caused by the Russia-Ukraine war, experts in Kigali unanimously acknowledged the importance of promoting intra-African trade. Growing Africa’s agribusiness sectors by using innovative solutions to help smallholder farmers to become more productive was crucial.

“This agricultural transformation in Africa requires the concerted effort of all stakeholders including policymakers, researchers, private sector and farmers,” Kanangire said.

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Rural women are often targeted by human traffickers and taken across borders in Africa and forced to become sex workers. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Apr 29 2022 (IPS)

Desperate to escape the rural area where she was engaged in the informal economy in Kayonza, a district in Eastern Rwanda, Sharon* made a long and arduous journey to Kenya in the hope of a well-paid job.

An unidentified individual contacted her, paid for her ticket, and gave her a modest amount of pocket money to travel to Kenya by road. The person told the 19-year-old she was traveling to take up an “employment opportunity”.

However, Sharon found herself in sexual servitude at a karaoke bar on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

Sharon’s job was to bow elegantly to all customers at the door and usher them inside the bar.

“I was also hired as a nightclub dancer and sometimes forced by my employer to engage in sexual intercourse with clients to earn a living,” the high school graduate told IPS in an interview.

Like Sharon, activists say the number of young women from rural areas trafficked into the sex trade across many East African countries is growing. The young women are lured with the promise of good jobs or marriage. Instead, they are sold into prostitution in cities such as Nairobi (Kenya) and Kampala (Uganda).

Both activists and lawmakers warn that people with hidden agendas could target young women from Rwanda.

The process of trafficking most of these young women into neighboring countries is complex. It involves false promises to their families and victims in which they are promised a “better life”, activists say.

In many cases, traffickers lure young women from rural villages to neighboring countries with the promise of well-paid work. Then, victims are transferred to people who become their enslavers – especially in dubious hotels and karaoke bars.

While Rwanda has tried to combat human trafficking, law enforcement agencies stress that the main challenge revolves around the financial and other assistance for repatriated victims. Limited budgets of the institutions in charge of investigation and rehabilitation of the victims have meant that these programmes are not working optimally.

The chairperson of the East African Legislative Assembly’s Committee on Regional Affairs and Conflict Resolution, Fatuma Ndangiza, warned that if no urgent measures are undertaken, the problem is likely to worsen.

“Most of these young women without employment were victims of a well-established human trafficking ring operating under the guise of employment agencies in the region,” Ndangiza told IPS.

The latest figures by Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) indicate that 119 cases of human trafficking, illegal migration, and smuggling of migrants in the region were investigated in the last three years.

These involved 215 victims, among whom 165 were females and 59 males.

Driven by the demand for cheap labor and commercial sex, trafficking rings across the East African region capitalize primarily on economic and social vulnerabilities to exploit their victims, experts said.

But estimates by the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM)  show that the lack of relevant legislation and needed administrative institutions across the East African region have continued to give traffickers and smugglers an undue advantage to carry on their activities.

To prevent human trafficking, Rwanda has adopted several measures, including passing a new law in 2018.

Under the current legislation, offenders face up to 15 years of imprisonment, but activists say this measure is not enough deterrent.

Although law enforcement officers were trained in combatting human trafficking, Evariste Murwanashyaka, a  fervent defender of human rights who is based in Kigali, told  IPS that enforcing laws is a challenge, mainly because it is hard to detect women who are engaged in sex work or other forms of sexual exploitation in neighboring countries.

Murwanashyaka is the Program Manager of Rwandan based Umbrella of Human Rights Organization known as ‘Collectif des Ligues et Associations de Défense des Droits de l’Homme’ (CLADHO)

“Young women are still more likely to become targets of trafficking due to the growing demand for sexual slavery across the region, ” he said.

Now with the COVID-19 pandemic, activists say there is not only a lack of awareness but people, especially youth, who are unaware they are victims of a human trafficking offense.

“Most informal job offers from abroad for these young people [from Rwanda] are  associated with illicit businesses, such as human trafficking, mainly of women, and their sexual and labor exploitation,” Murwanashyaka told IPS

According to the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies, the increasing unemployment rates, malnourishment, and school closures have increased human trafficking.

Meanwhile, RIB spokesperson, Dr Thierry Murangira is convinced that human trafficking is a transnational organized crime.

“Transnational organized crimes require the involvement of more than one jurisdiction and regional cooperation to investigate and prosecute the crime,” he said.

This article is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.
The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7, which “takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labor, end modern slavery and human trafficking, and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labor, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labor in all its forms”.
The origins of the GSN come from the endeavors of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such as exploitation, forced labor, prostitution, human trafficking”.

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Africa has committed to green recovery of COVID-19, now it needs to turn policy into action, analysts say. Credit: Dustan Woodhouse/Unsplash Dustan Woodhouse

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Apr 12 2022 (IPS)

Climate change activist Mithika Mwenda, the Executive Director of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), is not reluctant to engage African governments to do what’s necessary to commit to post-COVID-19 green growth strategies.

Through Africa’s post-COVID-19 green recovery pathway, initiated in July last year, governments have committed to reaching the Paris Agreement’s climate change targets and prosperity objectives by adopting eco-friendly measures and doing this amid COVID-19 recovery.

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) shows that COVID-19 has triggered the deepest economic recession. The current recovery plan by African governments is centred around climate finance, renewable energy, nature-based solutions, resilient agriculture, and green and resilient cities.

Activists say African countries need to urgently move from talk shops in conferences to implement green commitments.

Africa has committed to green growth strategies in its recovery from COVID-19, but it needs to ensure that the commitments are real, and not just on paper, says climate change activist Mithika Mwenda, the Executive Director of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

Mwenda told IPS that climate actors should not forget the shortcomings manifested by the environmental crisis in terms of biodiversity losses, plastic menace etc.

While tackling the climate crisis, most African countries will require a holistic approach to recovery planning and policymaking. Both climate experts and activists stress that  African governments face an ‘enormous challenge’ even as they seize opportunities of the green transition, which aims to assist developing countries in rebuilding better from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The latest official report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) indicates that by 2050 greenhouse gas emissions associated with plastic production, use and disposal would account for 15 per cent of allowed emissions, under the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C (34.7°F).

It said that a shift to a circular economy can reduce the volume of plastics entering oceans by over 80 per cent by 2040; reduce virgin plastic production by 55 per cent, save governments US$70 billion by 2040, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent, and create at least 700,000 additional jobs – mainly in the global south, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa.

While state actors in the negotiations expressed their optimism about the smooth implementation of green economic recovery from COVID-19, some environmental activists believe that much will depend on what is at stake as African countries commit unprecedented resources to green recovery from COVID-19.

“There is one thing resolving (to support international agreements) and another thing implementing it,” Mwenda said while referring to the current situation in most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Creating local green jobs: the United States, Italy and South Africa show the benefits of adopting green solutions, especially job creation. The report identified that improving the energy efficiency of existing and new homes, schools, and workplaces could create 900,000 jobs in South Africa.

“These urban actions would lead to significant emissions reduction that would surpass the South African 2030 climate target, making higher ambition to align with the Paris Agreement possible for South Africa,” the report stated. South Africa is one of the African countries committed to green recovery – although there have been mixed messages by politicians because of the country’s dependency on coal both domestically and for export.

The concerns raised by some politicians mirror concerns of other developing countries. Scientists in a recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that emissions need to be cut swiftly to limit global warming. However, one of the authors, Fatima Denton, warns that if this is done “at the expense of justice, of poverty eradication and the inclusion of people, then you’re back at the starting block.”

The report also warns that it is crucial to ensure that youth, indigenous communities, and workers are on board.

During the fifth session of the UN Environment Assembly, which took place in March in Nairobi, Kenya, the historical agreement on green recovery from COVID-19 was adopted based on three initial draft resolutions from various nations, establishing an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC), that has been assigned to complete draft global legally binding agreement by the end of 2024.

According to Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP, this is the most significant environmental multilateral deal since the Paris accord.

The historic resolution, titled “End Plastic Pollution: Towards an internationally legally binding instrument”, was adopted after the three-day UNEA-5.2 meeting, attended by more than 3,400 in-person and 1,500 online participants from 175 UN Member States, including 79 ministers and 17 high-level officials.

“This is an insurance policy for this generation and future ones, so they may live with plastic and not be doomed by it,” Andersen said.

While humanity is facing a pandemic, an economic crisis and an ecological breakdown, African governments were advised to put their countries on sustainable trajectories that prioritise economic opportunity, poverty reduction and planetary health.

The continent holds 30 percent of the world’s mineral reserves and 65 percent of its arable land. It has massive renewable energy sources, according to the UNEP estimates.

According to environmental experts, the best way to tackle these issues simultaneously in Africa is to prioritise green investments in COVID-19 recovery by mobilising assets that back the sustainable use of resources.

Because the economic fallout from COVID-19 accelerated existing inequalities, it is even more critical for countries to rebuild their economies and enhance resilience against future shocks.

While activists agree the green recovery initiative is important for post-COVID-19 economies in Africa, the major challenge for these developing countries is access to these funds.

Faustin Vuningoma, the Executive Secretary of Rwanda Climate and Development Network (RCDN), told IPS that the capacity to develop green projects and meet the required criteria for most countries in Africa could easily hinder the developing world – especially access to resources.

“It is important for African countries to engage development partners with the funding resources and make sure they meet all criteria to access these funding,” Vuningoma said.

“The international partnerships will be crucial in tackling a problem that affects all of us,” said Dr Jeanne d’Arc Mujawamariya, Rwanda’s Minister of Environment, referring to the landmark agreement in Nairobi.

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Negotiators at the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) in Kenya. African countries have been encouraged to adopt circular plastic policies which will lower greenhouse emissions. Credit: UNEA

By Aimable Twahirwa
Nairobi, Kenya, Mar 1 2022 (IPS)

Environmental experts gathered in Nairobi, Kenya, have urged African governments to take advantage of ‘circular plastic opportunities’ to lower greenhouse gas emissions and stop environmental degradation. They were speaking to IPS on the sidelines of the fifth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA).

The key approach to a circular economy for developing countries in Africa and elsewhere, according to experts, should focus on addressing plastic pollution by reducing the discharge of plastics into the environment by covering all stages of the plastic life cycle. Plastic waste would be reduced through restorative and regenerative projects using the material without allowing leakage into the natural environment.

Inger Andersen, the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), outlined critical steps on halting plastic pollution, stopping harmful chemicals in agriculture, and deploying nature to find sustainable development solutions by 2024.

“Ambitious action to beat plastic pollution should track the lifespan of plastic products – from source to sea – should be legally binding, accompanied by support to developing countries, backed by financing mechanisms, tracked by strong monitoring mechanisms, and incentivizing all stakeholders – including the private sector,” Andersen said.

The main challenge is how countries should move towards a more circular economy that benefits from reducing environmental pressure. Scientists stress the need for most African governments to strengthen the science and knowledge base on plastic pollution and improve their policies.

Mohammed Abdelraouf, chair of Scientific and Technological Community Major Group UNEP, told IPS that while there are many solutions to plastic pollution, research should complement these efforts by developing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.

“It is important for governments to make decisions that stimulate innovations,” he said.

According to the draft resolution being debated at UNEA, signatories to an internationally legally binding agreement would commit to reducing plastic pollution across the entire lifecycle of plastics, from preventive measures in the upstream part of the lifecycle to downstream ones addressing waste management. Rwanda and Peru drew up the resolution.

For a smooth implementation and compliance by stakeholders, the UN agency in charge of environmental protection is engaged with stakeholders, including governments, the business community, researchers, and civil society. The engagement aims to understand priorities, challenges, what’s needed to foster a plastics circular economy that works for industry, economies and meets environmental and social objectives.

Experts describe private sector support as crucial in managing plastic waste. Some business community members will benefit during implementation from grant financing to encourage the move towards the circular economy.

Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), says ambitious action is needed to beat plastic pollution. Credit: UNEP

With different industries across the plastic value chain now facing a shifting dynamic, Andersen noted that company shareholders and consumers are increasingly paying attention to the pollution challenges arising from their investments and purchasing decisions.

For example, one waste management initiative has supported public-private investment projects in three African countries, including Algeria, Ethiopia, and Rwanda, to advance sustainable waste management and the circular economy.

Margaret Munene, a Kenyan woman entrepreneur and chair of Business and Industry Major Group of UNEP, told delegates that the successful reduction of plastic pollution requires testing solutions.

“The private sector remains critical to creating innovative and technological solutions to address plastic waste,” she said.

Norwegian Minister of Climate and Environment, Espen Barth Eide, has initiated a project to identify requirements and options for designing a science-policy interface. The project aims to develop different proposals on how to create the interface to operate as effectively as possible, especially for developing countries.

“Plastic pollution has grown into an epidemic of its own. Paradoxically, plastics are among the most long-lasting products we humans have made – and frequently, we still just throw it away. Plastic is a product that can be used again, and then over and over again, if we move it into a circular economy. I am convinced that the time has come for a legally binding treaty to end plastic pollution,” Eide said.

Bérangère Abba, French Secretary of State in charge of Biodiversity is convinced that for increased recycling of plastic waste to be legally enforceable, it is important to negotiate to bring contentious parties together to address emissions.

“There is still a need to have an independent science-policy interface that would help monitor the progress and priorities of this ambitious goal dedicated to enabling a circular economy for plastics,” she told IPS.

Beyond plastics, experts say other major interventions needed concern the design of buildings that make efficient use of limited materials and use building processes that are less energy-intensive to lower greenhouse gas emissions and stop environmental degradation.

Official estimates show that Africa is the second most populous continent globally, and its urban population is expected to nearly triple by 2050 to 1.34 billion.

It’s estimated that between 60% and 80% of the built environment needed by 2050 to support this growing population has yet to be laid.

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Desperate for work Kamikazi put her faith in ‘agents’ to find her a job. Instead, she found herself working without pay as a domestic worker in Kuwait. Photo: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Rwanda, Jan 5 2022 (IPS)

When Kamikazi * from Gisagara, a district in Southern Rwanda, was forced to quit her job due to COVID-19 last year, she desperately sought other employment.

A former co-worker in the food processing firm where Kamikazi once worked introduced her to “agents”. They assured her she would find decent employment in the Middle East, but little did she know her co-worker had delivered her into the arms of human traffickers.

The following day, with her passport in hand, the 22-year-old approached the agent, who told her to pay about 300 US dollars as a facilitation fee.

“One day, I received a call from the agent who told me that I had to travel to Kenya where I would secure my visa to Kuwait,” Kamikazi told IPS.

At the border between Tanzania and Kenya, the young woman met other members of the human trafficking syndicate who helped her to cross into Kenya unnoticed before travelling by road to the Kenyan capital of Nairobi.

In Nairobi, she and the ‘agents’ hid residential house with several other young women of different African nationalities. Driven by fear and desperation, she continued with the ruse until the group finally boarded a plane to Kuwait.

“I was told that domestic workers from our region (East Africa) were more highly valued in Kuwait than those from other countries,” she says.

Kamikazi recalls her arrival. The traffickers took their passports and held her and some other young women prisoner in an apartment.

“We believed them because my hope was that the new opportunity would help change my life for the better,” she told IPS.

However, her hopes for a better future were soon dashed.

She was “hired’ by a family – but found herself locked up and unpaid. And if it suited them, her employers would swap the domestic workers between themselves.

“I didn’t have any valid travel document, and I was treated like an animal being traded by one family to another,” she said. To make matters worse, she realised that her ex-colleague, whom she considered a close friend, was responsible for her situation.

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), in most countries in the Middle East, domestic workers are excluded from labour law, which means they have no social, health or legal protection.

Domestic workers suffer from particularly arduous conditions, and their situation is all the more vulnerable because most countries have no laws governing their employment, the report said. Because they are excluded from labour law provisions, written employment contracts are not required.

Victims of human traffickers often become sexually exploited, forced into labour, slavery and can become victims of organ removal and sale.

Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) has warned that thousands of people fall prey to traffickers who portray themselves as recruitment agents. Vulnerable young women seeking greener pastures fall prey to these traffickers.

Latest estimates by UN Women indicate that while it’s challenging to get exact numbers of victims, the vast majority of detected trafficking victims are women and girls, and three out of four are trafficked for sexual exploitation.

Recent cases of maids being mistreated and assaulted by their employers in the Middle East have shone a light on domestic workers’ hidden and unregulated conditions.

In many cases, these women work illegally, which means they have little protection if their employers abuse them.

With tears in her eyes, Kamikazi remembers her first hours with her new employee.

“After confiscating my passport, I was told to stay at home (…) I was like in a cage,” Kamikazi said.

A typical working day started as early as 4 am and ended at midnight or later. There were no days off, and there was no going out unless to accompany the family somewhere.

“I had to take care of the house pets in addition to cooking, cleaning, washing clothes (…) I wanted to escape because I was abused by my employer but had no idea where to turn,” she said.

Whereas Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) findings indicate that the majority of the victims are intercepted at the point of exit – either at the airport or the different border points of the country – evidence shows there are cases where young women are trafficked to neighbouring countries as a transit for commercial sexual exploitation in the Gulf countries.

An investigation by law enforcement institutions in Rwanda found at least 47 local-based syndicate members were trafficking women from Rwanda to work abroad. As a result, 49 individuals, including company owners, were arrested and prosecuted in courts of law in 2018, according to judicial reports.

The trend shows an upward trajectory, with 131 trafficking victims identified in 2020, compared with 96 victims in 2019.

Like Kamikazi, most human trafficking victims are enticed from villages and towns with false promises of gainful employment abroad.

Studies have proven that when families are economically unstable, the vulnerability of children increases. Traffickers prey on such families by making false promises of a new job, augmented income, better living conditions and financial support abroad.

Even though Rwanda has a strict anti-trafficking law that penalises sex and labour trafficking with up to 15 years of imprisonment, the RIB Secretary-General, Jeannot Ruhunga, is convinced that trafficking, especially women and children, continues to be a serious challenge faced by the international community.

Speaking during the workshop ‘Law enforcement officers & Criminal Justice practitioners’ workshop under the theme: Combating Trafficking in Human Beings with a Multi-stakeholders’ approach for Central and East Africa, the senior Rwandan police investigator noted that organised trafficking in persons is transboundary. It’s a global problem but seriously affects Central and East Africa.

“The most important is about how countries work together to address challenges encountered during the investigation and prosecution of this transboundary offence and to strengthen cooperation and mutual assistance,” Ruhunga said.

According to data from the Rwanda Directorate General of Immigration and Emigration, the majority of suspected human trafficking victims identified in Rwanda were from Burundi (62.7%), followed by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) (15%) and Rwanda (13.6%).

Case data by the National Public Prosecution Authority reveal between 2016 and 2018, most perpetrators were male (63%), with females still comprising a substantial percentage of traffickers (37%).

The 2019 study conducted by Rwandan NGO Never Again Rwanda stresses that the effective management of national borders constitutes a critical component of inhibiting human trafficking because it functions to deter criminals and identify victims.

The research found that the primary transit countries for trafficking in East Africa are Uganda, Kenya, and, to a lesser extent, Tanzania. Uganda ranks first, followed by Kenya and Tanzania as destinations for trafficking.

Dr Joseph Ryarasa Nkurunziza, Executive Director of Never Again Rwanda, told IPS that awareness and education are key to beating human trafficking in Rwanda.

“Awareness is important considering that the pandemic has worsened the situation for many vulnerable groups which are now more prone to human trafficking,” Nkurunziza said.

For Kamikazi, her ordeal has come to an end. After being forced to work night and day and kept prisoner in her employer’s home, she was rescued after asking assistance from a businesswoman in Kuwait.

Her rescuer contacted the Rwandan Embassy in Dubai.

“It seemed like my employer didn’t want to give back my passport, but the Kuwait Police told them to give it to me.”

*Kamikazi’s name has been changed to protect her identity.

This is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN )  is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms.
The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such as exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking”.

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Rwanda's Gishwati Mukura rainforest is one of the most biodiverse places on the Congo Basin. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
NYABIHU, Rwanda, Sep 30 2021 (IPS)

Laurent Hategekimana, a villager from Nyabihu, a district from Western Rwanda, recalls the terrible condition of the Gishwati natural forest a few years ago when it was overrun by illegal loggers and invading farmers.

Many invaders of this natural reserve were local villagers, and Hategekimana, a farmer-turned environmental activist, faced a hard task changing their minds.

“Although many haven’t yet started getting tangible benefits, some people are engaging in beekeeping while others are trying to venture into tree planting, conservation farming and handcraft,” the father of six told IPS in an interview.

In these remote rural parts of Rwanda, tropical forest conservation is now creating new jobs for several thousand indigenous people who live especially near major rainforests in Western Rwanda thanks to the country’s new laws and policies encouraging community participation in environmental protection.

With a number of challenges facing this group who self-identify as having a link to surrounding natural resources, scientists recommend strategic solutions to resolve possible conflicts between people and the conservation of wildlife along this part of the Congo river basin.

Some scientists believe it is important to find out what kinds of activities communities want, need and could commit to and steward in a sustainable way, to come up with durable actions that address biodiversity conservation and climate change issues.

Thanks to several conservation mechanisms adopted recently by the Rwanda government and stakeholders, Hategekimana is among members of the indigenous community who have become actively involved in keeping guard of the Gishwati natural forest. They inform the local administrative authorities of illegal activities such as felling trees without a permit and burning charcoal.

“I now understand the importance of conserving the forest. That’s why I sacrifice my time to protect it,” Hategekimana said.

Over the last two decades, large parts of these natural reserves on the Rwandan side of the Congo rainforest were nearly depleted, largely due to resettlement and livestock farming.

When new forest conservation efforts were initiated in 2015, most local villagers felt they were depriving their main source of income. Some were initially engaged in illegal logging, timber, and charcoal business.

The natural reserve of Gishwati-Mukura, now a national park for conservation, is currently contributing to improving the livelihoods of the local communities living in the surrounding areas. This, in turn, offers the forest a better chance of regeneration.

This has pushed local residents to launch a local NGO focusing on the conservation of the newly created national park. Thanks to these initiatives, the size of the reserve increased from 886 to 1 484 hectares the number of chimpanzees grew from 13 to 30, the 600 hectares added to the core forest are naturally regenerating and chimpanzees started using this area over the last two decades

Professor Beth Kaplin, the Director of the Center of Excellence in Biodiversity and Natural Resources Management of the University of Rwanda told IPS that there is a need to commit to really listening to the people who live next to this park and interact with it daily and develop strategies collaboratively to solve emerging problems.

“We need to take time to find out what kinds of activities communities want, need and could commit to and steward in a sustainable way (…) to come up with durable actions that address biodiversity conservation and climate change issues,” she said.

Gishwati Forest, a protected reserve in the north-western part of Rwanda, covers an area of about 1439 hectares and Mukura forest, with a total surface of 1987 hectares, has critical populations of endemic and endangered species such as golden monkeys, blue monkeys, and chimpanzees and over 130 different types of birds.

The reserve also boasts about 60 species of trees, including indigenous hardwoods and bamboo, according to Rwanda Development Board, a government agency responsible for Tourism and Conservation.

The Rwanda Environmental Management Authority (REMA) estimates the forest reserves initially covered 250 000 hectares, but illegal mining, animal grazing, tree cutting, and other practices drastically reduced its size.

In 2014, Rwanda received $9.5 million from the Global Environment Facility through the World Bank to restore the forest and biodiversity in the Gishwati-Mukura forest.

The primary purpose of this funding was to support community-based activities. These included farm stays, handicrafts, beekeeping, and tourism activities such as tea plantation tours and the chance to learn from traditional healers, who use natural plants to support modern medicine and synthesised drugs.

The collective efforts of villagers, environmental, indigenous NGOs and local administrative entities to train and mobilise villagers on the importance of conserving the forest in this part of the Congo River Basin, which covers 33 percent of Rwanda, has been praised.

“These efforts have changed people’s mindsets and in turn save this natural forest from extinction,” said Jean Bosco Hakizimana, a senior local administrative leader in Arusha, a small forest village from Nyabihu, a mountainous district in North-Western Rwanda.

Delphine Uwajeneza, the deputy head of the African Initiative for Mankind Progress Organization, told IPS that the key to achieving the current natural forest conservation efforts would be to include indigenous people in decision-making and management of ecosystems. Her NGO advocates for the protection and promotion of the rights, welfare, and development of the historically marginalised people in Rwanda.

“Current conservation efforts will not allow rainforests to persist if they are completely closed off from use or other benefits by these communities … they are the first to preserve the environment,” Uwajeneza told IPS in an interview.

While the Rwandan Government and stakeholders are satisfied with current conservation efforts, some scientists and activists shake their heads in dismay and say it is not enough. They are adamant the communities living around those natural reserves need to benefit.

Dr Charles Karangwa, Head of the Regional Forests and Landscapes Programme for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Eastern and Southern Africa Region, told IPS the most important is to balance the need of these communities trying to make a living and trying to maintain and sustain their forests.

“Development actors need to engage these vulnerable communities in a win-win situation,” he said.

In 2011, Rwanda joined “The Bonn Challenge”, a global effort to bring 150 million hectares of the world’s deforested and degraded land into restoration by 2020. Rwanda has reached its 30% forest cover target, according to officials.

However, despite the good policy framework and efforts towards achieving this goal, experts stress the need for identifying ways that communities can benefit from the resources of the forest in sustainable ways.

“People who work here (in the traditional ceramic industry) earn their livelihood without entirely depending on forest resources,” says 55-year-old Giselle Uwimanaas as she chats with neighbours in the village a stone’s throw from a nearby rainforest reserve of Mukura in Rutsiro, Western Rwanda.

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Rwanda has introduced mobile dryer machines as part of an innovative solution to reduce post-harvest losses of food Credit: Aimable Twahirwa

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Rwanda, Jul 22 2021 (IPS)

Rwanda is trying to reduce post-harvest loss by relying on new technologies to increase the amount of food available for consumption and help smallholder farmers confront some challenges caused by the overproduction of staple crops.

For over 20 years, Cyriaque Sembagare, a maize grower from Kinigi, a mountainous village in Northern Rwanda, had survived on farming to feed his extended family but struggled with the loss of a significant portion of his harvest to rot. High levels of aflatoxin prevent farmers in remote rural Rwanda from selling maize to high-value buyers.

“I have been selling maize on the market, but I was given a low price because of the harvests highly perishable nature,” the 56-year-old farmer told IPS in an interview.

Post-harvest losses are high in Rwanda, with smallholder farmers losing an average of 27.5 percent of their production annually.

A comparison with the global and African scenarios indicates that Rwanda does well on preventing food loss and wastage (72.5 percent). The country is slightly lagging on average in sustainable agriculture (71 percent). It is among the lowest performers while tackling nutritional challenges (71.2 percent), according to the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) sustainability index.

To boost resilience and reduce post-harvest losses, the government and different development partners have supported thousands of farmers facing several barriers, ranging from a lack of knowledge to poor market access.

The initiatives include innovative solutions in post-harvest handling to improve food security in this East African country. The country is ranked 59th among 67 countries on the latest Food Sustainability Index (FSI), developed by The Economist Intelligence Unit with BCFN.

While Rwanda is ranked on top among nine low-income countries, especially in Sub-Saharan African, the country is lagging in addressing food waste.

FSI research by the Economist Intelligence Unit, based on data from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), indicates that in terms of annual food waste per head, Mozambique comes on top of African countries with 1.2kg, followed by Rwanda (1kg).

This high level of waste has prompted the government and partners to promote modern technologies to tackle post-harvest losses, including two types of dryer machines: Mobile grain dryer machines and Cob Dryer machines that tested successfully on maize, rice and soybean.

“The aim was to reduce the risk of crop degradation or contamination by different fungi which occurred when dried naturally and affects the availability of food,” Illuminée Kamaraba, the Division Manager in Post-Harvest Management and Biotechnology at Rwanda Agriculture Board, told IPS.

During the implementation phase, Rwandan researchers had embarked on testing Cob dryer machines on other crops like Roselle (Hibiscus). Some 400kg were dried before samples were taken to the laboratory to verify if the nutrients remained intact. This method focuses on limiting the harvests’ exposure to aflatoxin.

Before expanding the technology countrywide, a study to measure the impact of these innovations, especially the use of dryer machines, is planned for testing this year.

“The new technologies are complementary with some traditional methods for food preservation,” Kamaraba said.

Currently, Rwanda has acquired ten mobile dryer machines for the pilot phase to process 57 to 84 tons of well-dried and cooled cereals per day.

The mobile grain dryers mostly use electricity but could be connected to tractors to run on its diesel-powered burner where there is no electricity supply system.

For the cob dryer machine, its burner and fan depend on the supply of three-phase electricity and Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) gas, while the cob container (the wagon) is a tractor-drawn vehicle.

According to official projections, the new technology, promoted through private and public partnerships (PPP), aims to help Rwanda achieve 5 percent of post-harvest losses by 2024 – down from the current 22 percent for cereals and 11 percent for beans.

Jean de Dieu Umutoni, one of the experts from Feed the Future Rwanda, Hinga Weze, a non-government organisation working to increase the resilience of agriculture and food systems to the ever-changing climate in Rwanda, told IPS that the idea behind this innovation was to increase access to post-harvest equipment and solutions

“This has been conducted through different channels such as grants, especially for smallholders’ farmers,” he said.

Both Umutoni and Kamaraba are convinced that for Rwanda to implement the public-private partnerships to reduce post-harvest losses, gaps in knowledge of smallholder farmers, especially in remote rural areas, need to be filled.

So far, Hinga Weze and Rwanda Agricultural Board (RAB) have worked together in developing some guidelines that allow the private sector to use the new technologies. Experts say, however, that the biggest challenge for farmers is that they lack information on how to access suppliers. In contrast, the suppliers lack information on the growers that need the equipment.

Umutoni says that while public-private partnerships could introduce good practices, the government needs to support the technological innovations for them to be scaled up.

“There is a good start with on use of mobile dryers to address food waste reduction, but the private sector needs to be engaged in other crop value chains,” Umutoni told IPS.

While it is the task of the government to initiate solutions, experts argue that the private sector has a role to play in ensuring the technology is sustainable.

One such example is Hinga Weze’s ‘Cob Model’. This project has enabled a private sector operator to assist farmers by using the first sizeable mobile drying machine in Rwanda. It has a capacity for drying 35 metric tons within three hours or about 100 tons per day. The NGO developed guidelines with the Rwandan government for the machine’s use.

Already, there is some indication that these technologies will be successful.

Farmers, like Sembagare, are satisfied.

“Thanks to the adoption of smart post-harvest technologies, I was able to save half the crop that would otherwise have been lost,” Sembagare told IPS.

Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, is described as one of the safest and cleanest cities in Africa. The country is now implementing its national development plan to create green secondary cities. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Oct 30 2018 (IPS)

An ambitious programme aimed at developing six green secondary cities in Rwanda is underway and is expected to help the country achieve sustainable economic growth through energy efficiency and green job creation.

At a time when natural resource efficiency is described as key for  secondary cities in Rwanda to move towards a green economy, the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) is supporting the government of Rwanda in implementing its National Development Plan by creating a National Roadmap for Developing Green Secondary Cities.

The government has identified six cities  to become green secondary cities: Huye (south), Muhanga (central south), Nyagatare (northeast), Rubavu (northwest), Musanze (north) and Rusizi (southwest).

The national roadmap serves as an implementation tool for the Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy 2 (EDPRS2) and the Green Growth and Climate Resilience Strategy (GGCRS), and provides key actions and practical planning guidance to policymakers in order to strengthen economic growth, enhance the quality of health and basic services, and to address vulnerability in Rwanda’s Urbanisation process. 

As part of implementing the pillars of urbanisation as recommended in the roadmap, GGGI also provided support to draft the Rwanda Green Building Minimum Compliance and Standards that will strengthen  the current building codes to  accelerate green growth and low-carbon development in Rwanda’s urban areas.

With the urban population growing at 4.5 percent a year, more than double the global average, Rwandan officials are now emphasising the need to develop secondary cities as poles of growth as the country has set a target to achieve a 35 percent urban population by 2034.

In 2016 and 2017, GGGI in collaboration with the relevant government agencies developed a Green City Pilot visioning, parameters and concepts that will enable a demonstration effect on how green urbanisation could be showcased in a flagship project.

“The government initiative has so far helped to draw interested partners into providing technical and investment support to development of  these six secondary cities, and a number of project concepts have also been developed  into  green finance project to attract more investments into the cities,”” Daniel Okechukwu Ogbonnaya, the Acting Country Representative and Lead Rwanda Programme Coordination of the GGGI in Kigali, tells IPS.

Among some quick win projects that were identified during the development of the National Roadmap,  includes for example the Rubavu Eco-Tourism park in northwestern Rwanda, which aims to conserve the environment while improving the welfare of local people through job creation in the tourism and travel industry.

The initiative was facilitated to move from ideas into project concepts that could be used to access investment opportunities which has a good job creation potential when implemented

In Rwanda, some key interventions by GGGI to support a ‘green economy’ approach to economic transformation were to move from ideas into project concepts that could be used to access investment opportunities with potential job creation opportunities when implemented.

Major focuses of these interventions are mainly on sustainable land use management, promoting resilient transport systems, low carbon urban systems and green industry and private sector development.

“But the capacity to understand the paradigm shift at local level is evolving and do take time because  the subject area of green growth is still new,” Ogbonnaya says.

While the initiative appears to be a strategic tool for the National Strategy for Climate Change and Low Carbon Development that was adopted by Rwanda in 2011, experts suggest that it is also important for local administrative entities to understand the mechanisms of green urbanisation and secondary city development.

Some experts in urban planning believe that with the mindset for Rwanda’s green secondary cities development are changing from “quantity” to “quality,” top priority should be given to marrying individual and community interests in these remote urban settings.

“With the high rate of energy consumption growth, the new approach for green secondary cities seeks implementing and enforcing energy efficiency standards for industrial and residential uses,” Parfait Karekezi, who oversees Green and Smart City development at Rwanda Housing Authority, tells IPS.

A key focus of these government interventions is the provision of affordable housing with adequate water and sanitation facilities for secondary cities dwellers, promoting grouped settlements locally known as ‘Imidugudu’.

With the weak residential infrastructure in secondary cities  in Rwanda, Karekezi stresses that current efforts supported by GGGI are helping local authorities to adopt a set of housing standards with appropriate design for some parts such as windows to provide energy savings in electric lighting.

“Absolutely, Rwanda has a long way to go, there are  efforts to raise awareness on energy efficiency and other issues, such as urging people in these listed areas not to build housing that does not meet the required standards,” Karekezi tells IPS in an exclusive interview.

Within these efforts supported by GGGI, both climate change experts and Rwandan officials believe that the ability of secondary cities to create job opportunities would help draw people from rural areas as well as reduce the influx of people to Kigali.

Both Karekezi and Ogbonnaya are convinced that capacitating local actors and the private sector to understand how projects and concepts are designed represents a shift in how the implementation of green urbanisation will be managed.

Despite some successful projects including the ecotourism park initiative which needs a scale up investment to  to improve the welfare of local residents in Rubavu, a lakeside city in northwestern Rwanda where local residents and  experts believe that the focus should be more on private investments than on direct government aid.

In 2018, GGGI received approval to be the delivery partner on a 600,000 dollar Readiness Support project fund from the Green Climate Fund (GCF), which aims to ensure that the Government of Rwanda has improved capacity to develop and deliver green city development concepts, identify investment priorities. GGGI also supported the Rwanda GCF Direct Access Entity to access in 2018 the sum of 32.8 million dollars for “Strengthening Climate Resilience of Rural Communities in Northern Rwanda.”

But still, locally-based organisations and administrative authorities with private companies need to be the main actors for the successful implementations of the green cities initiative.

Currently GGGI is capacitating the local administrative entities in the listed secondary cities to develop their own District Development Strategies (DDS)  for six secondary cities as reference tools for the better implementation of green initiatives at local level.

Thanks to these interventions, some local actors are being empowered to implement projects such as garden cities, which have been described as another opportunity to attract investment and create employment as well.

“But to really grow, these green city projects needs to bring in financing and to get this happening, we need to have interesting projects and interesting businesses such as clean energies in which private companies can invest,” Karekezi tells IPS.

Greening practices are being adopted in Rwanda which include the terracing on hillsides to control erosion like here in Rulindo district, Northern Rwanda. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Oct 12 2018 (IPS)

In a move to achieve its green growth aspirations by 2050, Rwanda has placed a major focus on promoting project proposals that shift away from “business as usual” and have a significant impact on curbing climate change while attracting private investment.

The latest report published by the Rwanda Environmental Management Authority (REMA) in 2015 states that the country needs to adapt – and keep adapting – so that Rwandans can become climate resilient and be assured that they can thrive under changing climate conditions.

Rwanda is one of a few nations in the world to develop its own climate-related domestic budget to finance mitigation and adaptation projects and leverage international climate finance. Since it was established in 2012, the National Fund for Climate and Environment, commonly known as “FONERWA”, has played a major role in this country’s climate resilient development by financing various green economy projects.

It is also the focal point for channeling international climate finance into projects in Rwanda, while offering technical assistance to project proponents to ensure the success of investments.

“Thanks to this expertise, much of the core funding has been allocated to projects on a grant basis, returns are being measured in impact,” Daniel Ogbonnaya, the acting country representative and lead, Rwanda programme coordinator of Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), in Kigali, tells IPS.

GGGI is an international organisation that has partnered with the Rwandan government to help the country access the Green Climate Fund (GCF). The GCF, established by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), assists developing countries in adaptation and mitigation to counter climate change.

For example, one of FONERWA’s major impacts during the implementation phase has seen over 130,000 green jobs created, nearly 25,000 families connected to clean energy, and approximately 20,000 hectares of land secured against erosion, according to official estimates.

Now the East African country which has faced challenges related to the pressures on natural resources from a growing population is relying on FONERWA to implement its national Green Growth and Climate Resilience Strategy, adopted in 2011, to achieve some of its national climate targets.

FONERWA, which is the sole vehicle through which environment and climate change finance is channeled, programmed, disbursed and monitored in the country, is also being used by the government as an instrument to facilitate direct access to international environment and climate finance.

Government departments and districts can access FONERWA funding. But the fund is also open to charitable and private entities, including businesses, civil society and research institutions. However, to be eligible for funding, proposals are required to meet standard criteria set out for achieving the country’s green growth.

GGGI is providing technical assistance to strengthen the capacity of FONERWA in designing world class climate resilience projects and to enhance the fund’s ability to mobilise more resources.

The institute has been focusing on providing demand-driven technical advisory services; the development of inclusive green growth plans that are gender sensitive; and the creation of an enabling environment to engage and foster public and private sector investment in green growth.

While a significant amount of money has been allocated by FONERWA toward efforts to help mitigate climate change, one of the key criteria for approval of funding proposals was taken into account in selecting public and private adaptation and mitigation projects and programmes to finance.

The director general of REMA and also the national focal person of the GCF, Coletha Ruhamya, explained that growth in Rwanda is only possible if the private sector is on board and plays a leading role.

“This is because business practice in the country has always been associated with environmental pollution and degradation,” she told IPS.

In April, FONERWA proposed a new approach dedicated to encouraging the private sector to take advantage of the existing opportunities in addressing environmental challenges, including climate change.

Since its inception in 2012, FONERWA has successfully funded 35 competitively-awarded, high-impact projects to the tune of 54 million dollars and has also received in 2018 another 33 million dollars of earmarked funding from the GCF as the accredited entity’s implementing partner for a new climate-resilience project in Rwanda.

However, some stakeholders in the private sector stress the need for serious sensitisation programmes meant for local investors to understand the opportunities that are in the industrial sector through leveraging on the green fund.

The chief executive officer of the Rwanda Private Sector Federation (PSF), Stephen Ruzibiza, told IPS that local private investors have a lot to access withinvthe green fund.

Currently the PSF is engaging with FONERWA and a limited number of local financial intermediaries to offer long-term loans to private businesses focusing on environmental sustainability with a low interest rate which is fixed at 11.5 percent.

The current average lending interest rate for commercial banks in Rwanda is 17.58 percent, according to the National Bank of Rwanda.

According to Jean Ntazinda, a consultant with the FONERWA Readiness Support Project, the private sector in Rwanda has so far been left behind when compared to government entities in accessing the GCF financing mechanism.

“Although at the national level some private sector projects relating to adaptation got financed, there is a long way to bring the private sector on board due to the lack of another entity accredited by GCF,” Ntazinda told IPS in an exclusive interview.

In 2015, Rwanda’s ministry of environment became accredited with the GCF and received a promise of 10 to 50 million dollars in climate finance. It was the country’s first national institution to receive GCF accreditation.

In March 2018, the government of Rwanda received an additional 32.8 million dollars from GCF to strengthen climate resilience in Gicumbi District, Northern Province.

The ‘Strengthening Climate Resilience of Rural Communities in Northern Rwanda’ project, that will run for six years, is expected to invest in climate-resilient settlements for families currently living in areas prone to landslides and floods, and support community-based adaptation planning and livelihoods diversification.

Currently FONERWA is in the process of developing several innovative funding mechanisms to finance pro-poor climate projects in Rwanda.

For instance, Result-Based Finance (RBF) is one of the approaches currently being used to fund renewable energy mini-grid projects in poor rural areas of Rwanda at a time when Rwandan officials are aiming to achieve 51 percent of electricity access by the end of 2019, from the current 45 percent.

RBF are payments that are disbursed at the end of the construction of the mini-grids, provided that pre-agreed conditions and milestones are met.

“This incentivises developers to look for private equity and debt to fund the construction costs. And it gives further certainty to the lenders that parts of the debt will be repaid,” Ogbonnaya told IPS.

However, Ogbonnaya is convinced that local commercial banks in Rwanda are willing to promote access to private finance for green initiatives, but don’t yet understand the process.

“This is because using government or local budget is key to showing country ownership and to showing that a specific project is part of a broader national strategy, but for adaptation funds, co-benefits such as social, environment, gender impacts and pro-poor impacts are so crucial,” he said.

In Rwanda the banana disease BXW is detrimental to a crop and has far-reaching consequences not only for farmers but for the food and nutritional security of their families and those dependent on the crop as a source of food. Credit: Alejandro Arigón/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Sep 25 2018 (IPS)

When Telesphore Ruzigamanzi, a smallholder banana farmer from a remote village in Eastern Rwanda, discovered a peculiar yellowish hue on his crop before it started to dry up, he did not give it the due consideration it deserved.

“I was thinking that it was the unusually dry weather causing damage to my crop,” Ruzigamanzi, who lives in Rwimishinya, a remote village in Kayonza district in Eastern Rwanda, tells IPS.

But in fact, it was a bacterial disease.

Ruzigamanzi’s crop was infected with Banana Xanthomonas Wilt (BXW), a bacterial disease that affects all types of bananas and is known locally as Kirabiranya. "Our ongoing effort to develop, test, and deploy smart or normal mobile applications is a critical step towards cost-effective monitoring and control of the disease spread." -- Julius Adewopo, lead of the BXW project at IITA.

Here, in this East African nation, BXW is detrimental to a crop and has far-reaching consequences not only for farmers but for the food and nutritional security of their families and those dependent on the crop as a source of food.

Banana is an important crop in East and Central Africa, with a number of countries in the region being among the world’s top-10 producers, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization Corporate Statistical Database.

According to a household survey of districts in Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda, banana accounts for about 50 percent of the household diet in a third of Rwanda’s homes.

But the top factor affecting banana production in all three countries, according to the survey, was BXW.

Researchers have indicated that BXW can result in 100 percent loss of banana stands, if not properly controlled.

Complacency and lack of information contribute to spread of the disease

The BXW disease is not new to the country. It was first reported in 2002. Since then, there have been numerous, rigorous educational campaigns by agricultural authorities and other stakeholders, including non-governmental organisations.

Farmers in Ruzigamanzi’s region have been trained by a team of researchers from the Rwanda Agriculture Board and local agronomists about BXW. But Ruzigamanzi, a father of six, was one of the farmers missed by the awareness campaign and therefore lacked the knowledge to diagnose the disease.

Had he known what the disease was, and depending on its state of progress on the plant, Ruzigamanzi would have had to remove the symptomatic plants, cutting them at soil level immediately after first observation of the symptoms. If the infection is uncontrolled for a long time, he would have had to remove the entire plant from the root.

And it is what he ended up doing two weeks later when a visiting local agronomist came to look at the plant.

By then it was too late to save the banana stands and Ruzigamanzi had to uproot all the affected mats, including the rhizome and all its attached stems, the parent plant and its suckers.

Ruzigamanzi’s story is not unique. In fact, a great number of smallholder farmers in remote rural regions have been ignoring or are unaware of the symptoms of this bacterial banana infection. And it has increased the risk of spreading of the disease to new regions and of resurgence in areas where it had previously been under control. Several districts in eastern Rwanda have been affected by the disease in recent years.

An enumerator for the ICT4BXW project conducting a baseline assessment of Banana Xanthomonas Wilt (BXW), a bacterial disease, status in Muhanga district, Rwanda. Courtesy: Julius Adewopo/ International Institute of Tropical Agriculture

Using technology to strengthen rural farmers and control spread of BXW

Early 2018, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), in partnership with Bioversity International, the Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies and the Rwanda Agriculture Board, commenced a collaborative effort to tackle the disease through the use of digital technology. IITA scientists are exploring alternative ways of engaging farmers in monitoring and collecting data about the disease. The institute is renowned for transforming African agriculture through science and innovations, and was recently announced as the Africa Food Prize winner for 2018.

The new three-year project (named ICT4BXW), which launched with a total investment of 1.2 million Euros from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, seeks to explore the use of mobile phones as tools to generate and exchange up-to-date knowledge and information about BXW.

The project builds on the increasing accessibility of mobile phones in Rwanda. According to data from the Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority, this country’s mobile telephone penetration is currently estimated at 79 percent in a country of about 12 million people, with a large majority of the rural population currently owning mobile phones.

“Our ongoing effort to develop, test, and deploy smart or normal mobile applications is a critical step towards cost-effective monitoring and control of the disease spread,” says Julius Adewopo, who is leading the BXW project at IITA. He further explained that, “Banana farmers in Rwanda could be supported with innovations that leverages on the existing IT infrastructure and the rapidly increasing mobile phone penetration in the country.”

Central to the project is the citizen science approach, which means that local stakeholders, such as banana farmers and farmer extensionists (also called farmer promoters), play leading roles in collecting and submitting data on BXW presence, severity, and transmission. Moreover, stakeholders will participate in the development of the mobile application and platform, through which data and information will be exchanged.

About 70 farmer promoters from eight different districts in Northern, Western, Southern, and Eastern province will be trained to use the mobile phone application. They will participate in collecting and submitting data for the project—about incidence and severity of BXW in their village—via the platform. The project expects to reach up to 5,000 farmers through engagement with farmer promoters and mobile phones.

Further, data from the project will be translated into information for researchers, NGOs and policy makers to develop effective and efficient support systems. Similarly, data generated will feed into an early warning system that should inform farmers about disease outbreaks and the best management options available to them.

A real-time reporting system on the disease

While the existing National Banana Research Programme in Rwanda has long focused on five key areas of interventions with strategies used in the control or management of plant diseases, the proposed mobile-based solution is described as an innovative tool that it is easily scalable and flexible for application or integration with other information and communications technology (ICT) platforms or application interfaces.

“We observe limitations in the availability of reliable and up-to-date data and information about disease transmission patterns, severity of outbreaks, and effect of control measures,” Mariette McCampbell, a research fellow who studies ICT-enabled innovation and scaling on the ICT4BXW project, tells IPS. “We also have lack good socio-economic and socio-cultural data that could feed into farmer decision-making tools and an early warning system.”

The new reporting system intends to develop into an early warning system that will allow the Rwandan government to target efforts to mitigate the spread of BXW, it also aims to serve as a catalyst for partnerships among stakeholders to strengthen Banana production systems in the country.

“This [ICT] innovation could enable [near-]real-time assessment of the severity of the disease and support interventions for targeted control,” explains Adewopo.

The project team is currently working hard to co-develop the ICT platform, with farmer promoters and consultants. By the second quarter of 2019, tests with a pilot version of the platform will start in the eight districts where the project is active.

The project team have already identified a variety of scaling opportunities for a successful platform.“Problems with Banana Xanthomonas Wilt are not limited to Rwanda, neither is it the only crop disease that challenges farmers. Therefore, our long-term goal is to adapt the platform such that it can be scaled and used in other countries or for other diseases or other crops,” McCampbell explains.

According to Adewopo, “the vision of success is to co-develop and deploy a fully functional tool and platform, in alignment with the needs of target users and with keen focus on strengthening relevant institutions, such as the Rwanda Agricultural Board, to efficiently allocate resources for BXW control and prevention through democratised ICT-based extension targeting and delivery.”

There is increasing need for smarter and faster management of risks that have limited production in agricultural systems.

In recognition of BXW’s terminal threat to banana crops, there is no doubt that the use of ICT tools brings a new hope for banana farmers, and can equitably  empower them through improved extension/advisory access, irrespective of gender, age, or social status – as long as they have access to a mobile phone.

*Additional reporting by Nalisha Adams in Johannesburg

Akaliza Keza Gara is the founder and managing director of Shaking Sun, a multimedia business specialising in website development, graphic design and computer animation in Rwanda. She is one of the few women in the ICT sector. Credit: Orphelie Thalmas/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Aug 7 2014 (IPS)

Akaliza Keza Gara is only 27, but she’s achieved much for women in Rwanda’s technology sector in just a short space of time.

She is the founder and managing director of Shaking Sun, a multimedia business specialising in website development, graphic design and computer animation.

She has a list of accolades to her name, including being one of four Rwandan women entrepreneurs recognised in 2012 for their exceptional efforts in Information Communication Technology (ICT) by the International Telecommunication Union, and being appointed as a member of the 4Afrika advisory council for Microsoft this year."There is currently a growing need to nudge young Rwandan girls into being innovative, especially in the area of technology." -- Nancy Sibo, student

But Gara considers her main achievement as being part of a team of animators who worked on African Tales, the first ever cartoon series produced in Rwanda.

“Seeing my name in the credits [of the cartoon series] was a big moment for me and I am so thankful I had that opportunity,” she tells IPS.

As a university graduate in multimedia technology, Gara is convinced that since women are consumers of ICT, it is important that they are also a part of the developers of technology so they can ensure that there are more diverse products available that appeal to both genders.

However, Gara notes that there are a limited number of Rwandan women in the ICT industry.

“But there is  still hope that newer developments in the field of IT can now [see] women [working] alongside men,” she says.

There are no clear figures about the total number of women in the IT industry here. The blueprint for this Central African nation’s second phase of economic development emphasises transforming itself  from an agrarian to knowledge-based economy in order to achieve middle-income status by 2020.

A 2012 report by the United Nations Broadband Commission for Digital Development, praised Rwanda for laying a 2,500-km national fibre optic cable in order to provide broadband internet for all.

Rwanda  has been ranked seventh in Africa and 80th in the global ranking among countries that have embarked on boosting broadband affordability and uptake.

While the country has been developing national action plans on ICT since 2001, it is only recently that the need for women’s participation in the sector has been magnified.

Gara is among a group of young women entrepreneurs here who are promoting an initiative called “Girls In ICT Rwanda”, which was launched last year to encourage more girls and women to embrace the field.

The project provides grants to young women to implement and market their ICT projects. Money is allocated based on the innovation aspect for each project.

Goldon Kalema, a senior technologist in charge of e-government services coordination in the Rwanda’s Ministry of Youth and ICT, tells IPS that the initiative aims to promote and encourage the deployment and utilisation of ICTs.

“The skills development area is designated to be among the key five focus areas identified to fuel continued growth, ” he says.

In 2012, a knowledge and technology lab — known more commonly as KLab — was established as the first-ever ICT innovation centre in the country to bring innovators together and give them the resources they need to explore their ideas, learn from each other, and develop innovative technology.

However, young women still remain intimidated by the technology sector because of the stereotype that it was a male-dominated field.

“If women are part of and can make up a huge part of the market for ICT products, they can also enjoy the available opportunities alongside men in the ICT industry from both developer and end-user perspective,” Gara points out.

Gara believes that there is also a need to ensure that young women acquire relevant skills. “Girls In ICT Rwanda” also organises events for female students here, giving them an opportunity to showcase their ICT skills and meet role models.

It has led to the introduction of a wide variety of training courses that are provide free of charge and are intended especially for young women

“This training has been vital in helping a number of beneficiaries acquire new skills, which lead to new and interesting jobs,” Gara says.

Nancy Sibo, a young student in the faculty of Agricultural Engineering at the University of Rwanda, is winner of a contest called Ms. Geek Rwanda.

The competition, which is hosted by “Girls In ICT Rwanda” and is open to female university students who have come up with their own technology innovations, is in its first year.

Sibo developed a mobile application that allows farmers to find out in real time the nearest area where they can get access to veterinary services and artificial insemination.

“There is currently a growing need to nudge young Rwandan girls into being innovative, especially in the area of technology … and promoting the girl effect approach for the sustainable development of the nation,” Sibo tells IPS.

Meanwhile, Gara is doing just that with cartoons.

She is currently in the process of setting up an animation studio to create cartoons and films targeting African children.

“My commitment is to encourage more girls and women to join the ICT sector, but I also get the feeling that by establishing an animation studio this will showcase my innovations to help Rwandan children, by creating characters and settings that they can relate to and stories to entertain and inspire them,” she explains.

Edited by: Nalisha Adams

Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, is described as one of the safest and cleanest cities in Africa as the government tries attract further investment and tourism. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Mar 28 2014 (IPS)

It’s almost 20 years now since Sylidio Gashirabake, a Hutu, was a perpetrator in Rwanda’s genocide. It’s also almost 20 years since his neighbour, Augustin Kabogo, a Tutsi, lost his sister and family in the violence. But today, both men work side-by-side in their joint business venture in Kirehe district in southeastern Rwanda.

It is estimated that 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus lost their lives in the massacre that began following the death of former President Juvenal Habyarimana, and his Burundian counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira, when their plane was shot down over Kigali on Apr. 6, 1994.“Rwanda has a clear business environment which is providing incentives and facilities that is making our job easy to cover other neighbouring countries." -- Atul Ajela, the general manager of mattress manufacturer Dodoma

Gashirabake was released from prison in 2006 after confessing two years earlier to his crimes and revealing to Kabogo — who managed to escape the killing by hiding in a neighbouring marshland — where the remains of his family where. Though Gashirabake has always denied having any part in the death of Kabogo’s family.

“I have deliberately [confessed] so to ease my conscience from this burden, which I am unable to continue bearing after several years,” Gashirabake told IPS.

Two years ago, Kabogo forgave Gashirabake and the neighbours have been business partners ever since.

They are part of a group of 30 people involved in a swine breeding project in Kirehe district that was founded by a Japanese volunteer in 2012 and aims to reconcile victims and perpetrators of Rwanda’s genocide.

And both Gashirabake and Kabogo are convinced that in order for them to be successful, it is imperative that reconciliation in Rwanda becomes a reality. Right now, they earn around 200 dollars per month on average from the business.

Kabogo is convinced that it is no longer important whether Gashirabake killed his family or not. What is important, he says, is that Gashirabake has apologised for the crimes he committed.

“I must agree that reconciliation through poverty reduction is slowly becoming a reality 20 years after [the genocide] in Rwanda,” Kabogo told IPS.

Across the 30 districts of this central African nation there are several projects, supported by both the government and NGOs, which focus on reducing poverty.

This includes the government-funded Girinka (“May you have a cow” ) project. Founded in 2006, Girinka distributes cows to vulnerable families in remote rural areas. The project states that as of 2013, about 350,000 people have benefitted from the programme.

Because almost 90 percent of the population relying on the agriculture sector for their survival, the government has adopted a number of reforms to ensure that poor households and genocide survivors are supported.

This includes the establishment of the Government Assistance Fund for Genocide Survivors which, since its creation in 1998, has had a total budget of 117 million dollars to provide education, healthcare packages and housing for vulnerable genocide survivors.

Since it took power after defeating the genocidaire regime in July 1994, the former rebel group and current ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) has embraced major reforms, including sound economic ones.

In a World Bank report entitled “Rwanda: Rebuilding an Equitable Society – Poverty Reduction After the Genocide” showed that approximately 70 percent of the country’s 11.5 million people lived below the poverty line in 1993. Four years later, this was reduced to 53 percent.

Latest figures published in the government’s third Integrated Household Living Conditions Survey 2011 show that between 2006 and 2011 a further one million people were lifted out of poverty.

And Rwanda has been lauded by its development partners, the World Bank, European Union, and the International Monetary Fund, for these economic achievements and successful reforms.

Commercial Street avenue in Kigali’s city centre, Rwanda. New buildings are sprouting across the capital city’s skyline 20 years after the genocide. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

However, there is an emerging consensus that challenges to the country’s economic growth and development remain.

Pascal Nshizirungu, a lecturer in socio-economic sciences at Kigali University, told IPS that national efforts to mobilise investment should also go hand-in-hand with closing the gap between rich and poor.

The government, through the second phase of its Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy, is investing in key development areas in order to have Rwanda reclassified as a middle income country by 2020, with a per capita income of 1,240 dollars. Currently the per capita income of Rwanda’s middle class is estimated to be 693 dollars.

The government has also been targeting foreign investment and creating incentives for investors, such as privatisation.

“Apart from political stability, the country has now an asset which other countries in the region don’t have such as infrastructure, which is attracting much more private investments,” Robert Mathu, executive director of the Rwanda’s Capital Market Authority, a government regulatory body for all stock market operations, told IPS.

“The country is looking to boost national growth and create a climate that encourages the involvement of the private sector,” Mathu said.

Rwanda’s economic growth was 4.6 percent in 2013.

“We believe that by having strong partners in the private sector, we will reduce poverty and agriculture…also it can contribute to the economic growth at the same time,” Rwandan Minister of Finance and Economic Planning Claver Gatete told IPS.

Atul Ajela, the general manager of Dodoma, a new mattress manufacturer that invested in Rwanda two years ago, believes that 20 years after the genocide, Rwanda is now a safe, and the best, place to start a business.

“Rwanda has a clear business environment which is providing incentives and facilities that is making our job easy to cover other neighbouring countries,” Ajela told IPS.

Remains of some of the over 800,000 victims of Rwanda’s genocide. Credit: Edwin Musoni/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Jul 29 2011 (IPS)

Governments, especially in Africa, need to have strong accountability measures in place in order to effectively reach women in rural areas through gender responsive budgeting.

This was one of the recommendations in the Global Call for Action plan drawn up at the end of an international high-level meeting on gender responsive budgeting held in Kigali from 26 to 28 Jul. The meeting was held in conjunction with the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (U.N. Women) and the European Union.

Delegates also agreed that there was a need to strengthen the skills, competencies and abilities of local government leaders. In addition, the enhancement of national statistical systems was needed to provide accurate data about various aspects of gender. The document, which is yet to be released, also said that the livelihood of marginalised women in rural areas needed to be improved by increasing their access to land ownership and property rights.

Rwanda has been called a role model for other African countries in promoting gender equity at all decision-making levels, as here women outnumber men in parliament. The country’s constitution also guarantees a minimum of 30 percent female representation at all levels of leadership.

Rwanda is involved in a three-year pilot programme, Gender Equitable Local Development (GELD), dedicated to improving women’s access to resources and services at local level through gender responsive planning and budgeting. GELD is organised by U.N. Women and the United Nations Capital Development Fund.

“Rwanda records female-dominated occupations at various levels of decision-making, but women also need to engage in other economic careers such as the construction and transport industries,” said Suzanne Ruboneka, a women’s rights activist based in Kigali.

Women comprise 54 percent of Rwanda’s population of nine million. Although there are no statistics available on the number of businesses owned by women, government acknowledges that the majority of employees in both the formal and informal sectors are women.

The regional programme director for U.N. Women, Diana Ofwona, said it is important to further promote gender equality through women’s ownership of development initiatives, such as microfinance schemes. She said it was a way to increase efficient coordination in gender responsive budgeting.

Fatuma Mukakarara, president of a Muslim women’s cooperative in Nyagatare, in northeastern Rwanda, said women’s involvement in financial services ensures that there is greater transparency.

“We are part of the management team in these financial services cooperatives (and) this contributes to ensure that there is greater transparency and accountability,” she told IPS.

She said that through her experience in managing a microfinance business she knows that rural women can play a principal role in managing financial resources.

“But sometimes women experience difficulty while applying for a loan from (a) microfinance (institution). This can be because of a lack of self-esteem for many,” Mukakarara said.

Ofwona said that what was mostly needed was adequate planning to integrate equity in managing and sharing resources.

“This includes removing some barriers which sometimes restrict women from equitably accessing local facilities (such as transport and microfinance schemes) … particularly in rural areas,” Ofwona says.

Economic analysts say the collection of statistical data on gender issues is still a major challenge for some countries.

“Once there is available data about gender, this would enable countries to determine what progress has been made towards achieving their targets (with gender responsive budgeting),” said Bernard Kayinamura, an economic expert based in Kigali.

Kayinamura said that, for example, the disaggregated data on secondary school pupils studying science subjects could not explain why the number of girls studying the subjects was not increasing.

“Thus there are sometimes missing figures which should be used (by decision-makers) in reviewing policies, procedures, practices and targets,” he told IPS.

Since 2009 Rwanda’s government and civil society organisations have embarked on a national campaign dedicated to training rural women in the administration and management of microfinance schemes. However, there are no available figures about the number of women who have undergone training.

Excerpt:

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Jul 26 2011 (IPS)

Rwanda is the first country in the world where women outnumber men in parliament, with women occupying 45 out of 80 seats. However, despite this, experts say that the country still needs a gender equality perspective on how national resources and programmes are implemented.

Rwanda wants women to access financial services and to gain skills to play a role in managing and allocating these resources. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

Since 2009, the country has been part of a three-year pilot programme, the Gender Equitable Local Development (GELD), which is organised by U.N. Women and the United Nations Capital Development Fund.

It is dedicated to improve women’s access to resources and services at local level through gender responsive planning and budgeting. GELD runs in four other African countries as well: Mozambique, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Tanzania.

But two years on, despite Rwanda’s efforts to make the budget gender responsive, civil society activists say social norms are still affecting gender equality, especially in rural areas.

This includes the ability of rural women to find employment. In many areas communities believe that a woman must only fulfill a domestic role and “give service” to her husband, and should not be employed.

“There have always been reported cases related (to) cultural norms in rural areas where young girls are sometimes excluded from” inheritance, said Zaina Nyiramatama, the executive secretary of Haguruka, a local non-governmental organisation advocating the rights of women and children.

While it is illegal to deny a woman or girl the right to inherit, punishable by a fine or a prison sentence, women and girls are still denied the right because of their gender.

However, government and civil society are working to sensitise local communities about the importance of this.

The issue of bringing a gender perspective to how government resources and programmes are implemented was the key focus of an international high level meeting held in Kigali from 26 to 28 Jul. The meeting is being held in conjunction with the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (U.N. Women) and the European Union.

Senior officials from a number of developing countries around the world and U.N. experts discussed the intricacies of their national strategies to ensure that local development is more gender equitable and supportive of the most excluded socio-economic groups.

Nyiramatama said that though women’s political participation and leadership is visible in Rwanda, there is also a need to look at promoting women’s economic empowerment through giving rural women access to microfinance services.

While Rwanda’s national policy emphasises that microfinance schemes for women should be decentralised to local areas, details about their daily management has always remained unclear.

In July 2009, government established the Women’s Fund, a credit scheme for women in Rwanda. Since then, at least 7,000 women have received assistance for micro and small enterprises from government, international donors and NGOs worth around 900,000 dollars, according to the central bank.

However, the regional programme director for U.N. Women in Rwanda, Diana Ofwona, observes that the allocation of funding should be done alongside equipping local administrative leaders with skills about gender responsive budgeting. This is because gender response budgeting is not only about accessing financial services, it is also about the equity role that women should play in managing and allocating these resources.

Both Ofwona and Nyiramatama agree that gender response budgeting is a paradigm on how women can play a major role in the social and economic transformation in a country like Rwanda, where 57 percent of the population live below the poverty line.

According to government statistics, 52 percent of Rwanda’s population are female, and a large portion of them are widows and/or single women, mostly engaged in income-generating activities on a full-time basis.

“The ownership of microfinance cooperatives (by local communities) is still a major challenge to strengthening rural women’s leadership in farming and other income-generating projects,” Ofwona said.

Residents in Bishenyi, a village 25 kilometres south of Kigali, say that two years ago a microfinance scheme was established to offer loans to the general population, but mostly targeting rural women farmers. However, it failed after six months because of mismanagement.

“We still think there is the possibility that (microfinance schemes) for women (will fail) if no adequate measures are adopted,” said 42-year-old farmer Tatiana Kankwanzi. She was referring to the fact that women needed to not only be beneficiaries of microfinance grants, but should also be part of the financial management and budgeting.

“Do you think these microfinance schemes have really benefitted women?” she asked IPS.

Rwanda has long been beset with problems related to a lack of expertise. Notably local authorities lack management skills to identify priorities and allocate resources.

Norah Matovu Winyi, the executive director of the African Women’s Development and Communication Network, a regional platform dedicated to sharing experiences, information and strategies among African women, said that the approach of gender responsive budgeting should be to know how public funds are raised, how they are used and to ensure that they reach target beneficiaries.

“It is imperative to diversify financial resources while associating gender-related issues with the needs and interests of the poor (and) other marginalised groups,” she said.

Policymakers argue that the approach of gender responsive budgeting is not merely about creating a special cooperative or financing schemes dedicated for women.

“People should not be confused about the term ‘gender’, but the main objective is to ensure that boys and girls within the existing revenues, expenditures and available financial resources are benefiting equitably,” Zohra Khan, an international expert in gender, told delegates at the meeting.

Excerpt:

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Jul 22 2011 (IPS)

When Callixte Munyabikari, a potato farmer from Gakenke in northern Rwanda, was rushed to a regional hospital after he fell ill with diarrhoea, he thought it was just a bad case of food poisoning.

A contaminated stream in Kimicanga, a suburb in Kigali. A majority of people in rural Rwanda still consume polluted water from rivers. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

Since 2007, the issue of hygiene and sanitation in rural areas has been of major concern as Rwanda’s government reduced spending on medical care for patients affected by poor hygiene and sanitation diseases across the country.

“It is important to eradicate the persistent behaviour among rural communities. A number of households used to have access only to a shared latrine,” said Rwanda’s minister of infrastructure, Colette Ruhamya, while underlining the role of proper sanitation and hygiene as the main component of sustainable development.

“Everybody can dig, and the latrine (and) the roof are lower cost material(s),” she said. Government’s aim is that each household, wherever possible, should have access to its own sanitation facility. Rwanda seeks to be a model of hygiene and sanitation for other African countries.

In fact, it is one of only four countries in Africa which look set to achieve Millennium Development Goal 7 to ensure environmental sustainability, which includes halving the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. The other three countries are Mozambique, Ghana, and Sierra Leone.

Delegates at the Africa Sanitation and Hygiene Conference (AfricaSan 3), which was held from 19 to 21 Jul. in Kigali, were divided on whether poverty was the main cause of poor sanitation facilities and waterborne diseases currently affecting millions of people across the continent.

“There is an urgent need for African countries to address the issue of sanitation and hygiene without relying on donors’ aid,” declared Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

According to him, the only inclusive solution to promote measures to prevent waterborne diseases is from local initiatives and without having to rely on foreign assistance.

Kagame’s comments came at a time when experts from several African praised the initiatives undertaken to promote hygiene across the Central African nation.

Since 2001, Rwanda has embarked on strong measures aimed at wiping out unhygienic practices, while sensitising local communities in urban and rural areas to change behaviour and bad habits that relate to poor hygiene.

Other initiatives taken to prevent waterborne diseases include the installation of toilets for each household across the country, while ensuring potable water supply systems in several remote areas across the country. Official statistics show that 61 percent of Rwanda’s rural population have access to improved drinking water sources, while 20 percent has access to improved sanitation.

However, some participants expressed pessimism arguing that there is still a long way to go as only four countries across the continent are on track with providing access to safe drinking water, compared to the rest their counterparts.

“It’s better to be realistic about commitments made (by governments) toward sustainable solutions, but this implies going along with proposed actions, by ensuring that the majority of rural communities are benefiting (from a) potable water supply and adequate sanitation infrastructure,” said the Zimbabwean minister of water resources development and management, Samuel Sipepa Nkomo.

“It is still unbelievable that only four African countries are on track toward achieving (the) MDG on sanitation,” Nkomo deplored. He blamed inadequate policies to mobilise financial resources in some African nations as a reason.

Speaking on the fringes of the joint summit by the United Nations and African Ministers Council on Water, Nkomo urged governments in countries still lagging behind achieving the MDG for concrete actions, while identifying that priority was need at grassroots level.

However, civil society is still optimistic that Africa could finally be turning a corner in the sanitation crisis; officials say the big challenge is more about adopting adequate policies in this area to curb the consequences of waterborne diseases.

According to Lydia Zigomo, the head of the environmental non-governmental organisation WaterAid, the challenge (in policy decision-making) remains formidable.

“A total of 584 million people in Africa do not have an improved sanitation, and the poorest are 18 times more likely to practice open defecation,” Zigomo said. She said that the issue of hygiene has always been the most neglected and off-track of the MDGs, with little funding, resources or political will to address the crisis.

But some representatives of African governments say that necessary resources are available, and that what was most needed was not money, but educating communities on how they can change bad habits with regards to hygiene and sanitation.

“This includes providing toilets after it has been noticed that hundreds of thousands of Africa’s rural population still practice open defecation, while ignoring the worst consequences of hygiene-related diseases,” Nkomo told IPS.

Official statistics show that diarrhoea, malaria, schistosomiasis, trachoma and intestinal helminths, are major diseases caused by poor hygiene practices and contamination of water across several developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

“In general, 1.8 million people die every year from diarrhoea diseases, which includes cholera, while 90 percent are children under five, mostly in developing countries,” a World Health Organization report said.

Northern Rwanda is a region described by health experts as having the highest number of hygiene- related diseases. Here a majority of people consume polluted water from neighbouring rivers, which run across the mountainous region.

Government, in collaboration with local administrative leaders, has implemented a number of measures, including sensitising the population to changing bad habits, and not consuming polluted water.

Since 2004, the International Committee of the Red Cross has implemented 23 clean water supply projects in several rural areas in northern Rwanda as a way to prevent against contracting waterborne diseases.

Excerpt:

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Nov 8 2010 (IPS)

At Kigali’s Kibagabaga Hospital, 30 young people aged between 12 and 18 years old wait in a crowded holding room, waiting for their turn to see the doctor in charge of prescribing antiretroviral drugs (ARVs). They are among 220,000 children affected by AIDS who are benefiting from social and medical assistance from the Rwandan government and its development partners.

Rwanda is seeking to expand support available to children affected by HIV, like these orphans in Muhanga village. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

Tunga – not his real name – is a 13-year-old young boy from Samuduha, one of the poorest slums of Kigali. His parents, he says, died of AIDS in 2008 when he was in primary six. Tunga had no idea that he was himself HIV positive; his main concern was taking over the care of his two younger brothers.

The paediatric centre at Kibagabaga Hospital sees around 40 patients each day for testing, counseling and treatment. There are 870 children receiving treatment at the centre; 55 of them on anti-retroviral therapy.

“But the fact that most of these infected children are from vulnerable families, makes it hard for them to take drugs due to hunger,” Murebwayire told IPS.

Kibagabaga offers voluntary counselling and testing to AIDS orphans and Tunga had no qualms about undergoing a test.

“Taking an HIV test was very easy for me, but when I was told that I was HIV positive… it was another story,”  he said.

“When I was first informed about my HIV status, I felt it was punishment for something I had done.”

But Tunga is fortunate to have support from several sources. He and his two brothers live in a house that was built for them by a local NGO in 2009, after the trio was found homeless.

The little family also receives help in the form of the Family Package, a social and medical assistance package the government has implemented for people living with HIV/AIDS. The UNICEF-backed programme offers households affected by HIV and AIDS treatment and counselling, family planning and nutritional support, and income-generating projects.

Child-headed households are assisted with paying for school fees and uniforms, as well as a monthly basket of food.

“When my parents died, I lost hope for my life. But with the support I got, I have managed to educate my young brothers and we did not have to drop out of school,” Tunga said.

The attention paid by Rwanda’s health authorities to the basic needs of children affected by AIDS is welcome, yet more is needed.

An activist with one community-based NGO in Kigali told IPS that many children living in the poorest areas are not aware that free care is available. AIDS orphans and children living with HIV also often lack emotional support, and are isolated from the community around them by a degree of stigma.

Excerpt:

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Oct 20 2010 (IPS)

In an attempt to meet the development goal of universal access to primary education by 2015, Rwanda’s government has decided to reallocate a large part of its tertiary education budget to the primary education sector.

Rwandan schoolgirls. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

Cedric Kavamahanga, an engineering student at the Institute of Science and Technology in Kigali, says many of his fellow students might have to drop out of college.

“The livelihood [and access to tertiary education] of a number of students from poor families are depending on this amount allocated to them,” he explains.

But the Rwandan government has made it clear that it believes the new focus on improving access to and the quality of primary education justifies the sacrifices that will be made in the tertiary education sector.

“The resolution to cut allowance for university students was taken after observing that there are other levels of the country’s education system, which are still lagging behind,” says education minister Charles Murigande.

The minister promises the bursary will be abolished gradually. He said, for a while, government will continue to support students financially, but for shorter periods, with students being required eventually to carry all of their university costs.

In 2009, Rwanda’s Ministry of Education spent $11.4 million on bursaries for about 27,000 students in public universities and higher institutions of learning.

Government says this is far too high and recommends rather using the money to ensure that every citizen receives up to nine years of free basic education – six years in primary school and three years in secondary school.

Murigande promises, however, not to let university students fall by the wayside. He says those students who are unable to complete their studies without financial support from government, will be somehow considered in the reshuffled education budget. But up until now, no specific plan has been put into place to solve the issue.

Ultimately, government hopes that public and private universities will start to finance bursaries for their own students from money generated by research produced at their institutions. Others will have to apply for loans and pay those back after their studies.

“The government emphasizes transforming higher learning institutions into autonomous universities capable of generating their own income from their research,” notes Murigande.

He believes it is government’s first obligation to ensure that everyone has access to basic education, while tertiary education is important, but not a necessity.

Since Rwanda introduced free primary education in 2003, learners’ enrolment numbers have risen throughout the country. But poor infrastructure, lack of equipment and a shortage of qualified teachers have been jeopardizing progress made.

“Rwanda has pledged to achieve universal education by moving ahead step by step, and so far, the country’s free primary education is only slowly becoming a reality,” explains Rwandan prime minister Bernard Makuza.

“From now on, 25 percent of the total budget [of $92.1 million] of the education sector, which used to be allocated as allowances to university students, will be injected to finance basic education for all”, he adds.

Makuza believes that cutting the allowances of public university students is the best way to close financial gaps in the primary education sector. The money will not only be channelled into primary education but also be used to improve the first three years of secondary education.

By 2012, 40 percent of the country’s children will have access to free primary and secondary education, and this number will be more than doubled by 2015, the deadline for meeting the MDGs, government promises.

“Despite our modest resources, we have allocated more than 25 percent of our annual national budget to education, helping us to realise 98 percent enrolment target for primary education, well ahead of 2015,” President Paul Kagame announced during the United Nations MDG Summit, which took place in New York in September.

This will be a huge improvement from eleven percent of children attending primary school in Rwanda in 2007.

But the country’s education experts are concerned that shifting budgets away from tertiary education will mean that, in the long-term, Rwanda will not be able to grow an intellectual elite that can help foster the poor central African nation’s economic growth.

They also believe it will undermine Rwanda’s widely perceived position as role model for the implementation of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (Unesco) ‘Education for All’ initiative that aims to meet the learning needs of all – children, youth and adults – by 2015.

“It would be important to carefully assess the trend of this change in educational finance to avoid that Rwanda ends up lagging behind when it comes to its competitive academic offer and economy,” warns a senior lecturer at the National University of Rwanda in Butare.

Excerpt:

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Oct 8 2010 (IPS)

Despite the availability of a vaccine, 1.3 million people worldwide died from tuberculosis (TB) in 2008, according to the World Health Organisation. Most of them lived in Africa and Southeast Asia.

Treating a TB patient in Kenya: work is under way to develop more effective vaccines to prevent the deadly disease. Credit: Julius Mwelu/IPS

To change this, non-profit research organisation Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation has been trying to find a replacement for BCG. The new vaccine, called AERAS-422, is a modern version of BCG that it is hoped will provide long-term protection against all forms of TB. It is about to undergo first medical trials in the United States.

In addition, Aeras is also supporting, in collaboration with Dutch biopharmaceutical company Crucell, the research of four TB vaccine candidates designed as booster vaccine that can be administered to children or teenagers who received an initial BCG vaccination for infants at birth.

Anthony Hawkridge, a senior researcher at the Aeras Foundation, says the booster vaccine clinical trials have now reached Phase IIb and will soon begin in infants in Kisumu, Kenya. Other trial sites will be Worcester in South Africa and Kampala, Uganda, as well as Bangalore, India. Phase IIb is specifically designed to study efficacy – how well the drug works at the prescribed dose.

Q: Why did you choose to conduct Phase IIB of the booster vaccine trials in Africa and India? A: The later phase clinical trials, such as IIB and III, during which one is actually testing whether the vaccine protects against TB, can only be done in areas of the world where there is a lot of TB, where the volunteers are likely to be exposed to TB in their homes, schools, workplaces, villages, and so on.

Q: The currently available BCG vaccine has several downsides: it neither fully protects children from developing TB, nor does it protect adults already infected with TB. Moreover, protection is not life-long. How will the new vaccine change this? A: We hope that at least one of the new vaccine candidates will prove to be more efficacious in preventing TB, not just in infants, but in all age groups and in varied populations, such as people infected with HIV.

We hope that protection will be long lasting, but until we have done the trials and got the product registered and used by a sizeable number of people, we won’t know.

We have data from animal studies and from early phase clinical trials, but it is not possible to extrapolate from that and say that the new vaccines will definitely work. We can only hope that they will.

Q: What are the expected outcomes of Phase IIB of the trials? A: It is difficult to quantify the outcomes. Developing vaccines against TB is extremely difficult.

Even if a vaccine candidate is shown to be safe, well tolerated and immunogenic [able to provoke an immune response] in early studies, it may simply fail at the last stage and not show significant protection.

Or there may be an unexpected safety concern that was not seen in early trials, like it happened with one of the first rotavirus vaccines. However, we are very optimistic about the fact that there are so many apparently good candidates coming through. And we are very hopeful that at least one of them will “go all the way”.

Q: What ethical standards do you set to protect infants who participate in trials? A: Sponsors and investigators conduct trials according to what is called GCP, Good Clinical Practice. This is an international set of standards for clinical research and part of what they do is ensuring that trial participants are protected.

One thing they specify is that any trial protocol is reviewed by a competent and independent research ethics committee whose job it is to ensure that the rights and safety of the trial participants are given due consideration.

But, ultimately, it is the responsibility of the trial’s principal investigator to ensure that the research is conducted according to the highest internationally accepted standards.

Q: If the trials go well, when do you expect the new vaccine to be available? A: Well, for years we have been saying 2015 to 2016. I did not attend the recent TB vaccine conference in Estonia, but I believe that the experts are now saying that it may take a bit longer, possibly until 2020.

Given that the first Phase IIB trial [which will take place in Kenya] is not yet fully enrolled, requires two years of follow-ups, and there still needs to be a Phase III, which will take at least three years to conduct, I cannot see a product being registered before 2017. Maybe 2020 is more realistic.

Q: What impact do you hope the new vaccine will have on TB incidence in Africa? A: It will depend on the vaccine’s efficacy, but without a better TB vaccine it will be difficult to turn the TB epidemic in Africa around.

Excerpt:

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Sep 30 2010 (IPS)

Two years spent training traditional birth attendants in remote rural areas has allowed Rwanda to reduce the country’s maternal mortality rate, says the country’s health department.

In Rwanda, where almost half of all women give birth at home, the majority of traditional birth attendants (TBAs) are non-professional practitioners who rely on skills passed on to them by elder women in the community. Many of them use un-sterilised equipment, sometimes causing mother and baby more harm than good.

Yet poverty-stricken, expecting mothers largely rely on TBAs because they lack access to public health services since they don’t have the means to pay for transport to the nearest clinic or hospital.

Laetitia Mureshyankwano, a 42-year-old mother of two who lives in the mountainous southern district of Gisagara, says she gave birth to five children with the help of TBAs, but only two babies survived the delivery.

Like Mureshyankwano, many rural women say they have gone through a lot of suffering when they had complications with their pregnancy, while others tell of fear of being infected with HIV due to insufficient safety precautions and sanitation.

“Although they put on gloves and aprons for the delivery process, we don’t feel safe because we don’t know how clean their tools are,” explains Mureshyankwano. She believes government’s TBA training programme has been a good initiative towards improving the situation of pregnant women who live in remote areas.

According to statistics from the United Nations Children’s Fund, in 2008, Rwanda reported a maternal mortality rate of 750 deaths per 100,000. The national health department is confident that the next report, due in 2011, will show a strong improvement over this baseline.

At the United Nations Millennium Development Goal (MDG) summit in New York City in September, Rwanda was applauded for the “significant progress” it has made towards achieving MDG 5 of improving maternal health.

“Government is committed to reach a target of zero deaths because no woman should die during child birth,” notes Ministry of Health permanent secretary Agnes Binagwaho, adding that though the TBA training programme, “this commitment has become a reality because communities are better served.”

To reduce maternal and child deaths, the Rwanda Ministry of Health launched a training programme for TBAs in August 2008 that teaches them basic nursing and midwifery skills. Through the programme, the health ministry also hopes to address the country’s general shortage of health workers, particularly in rural areas.

Rwanda has less than one midwife per 10,000 people, according to department’s statistics.

Traditional birth attendants who have not gone through the training programme are officially prohibited from delivering babies and instead help to monitor pregnancies, encourage women to get regular antenatal care and educate them about potential problems.

To further assist the newly trained TBAs, the Department of Health also provided mobile phones to 432 community health workers (CHWs), who are responsible for maternal health on district level. Through them, TBAs can now report difficult cases, complications or emergencies to the nearest clinic or hospital.

Government also purchased 67 ambulances, one for each district hospital, to make sure pregnant women in remote areas can access emergency care.

Health department officials said they were unable to disclose the budget made available for the TBA training programme and related initiatives.

The health department acknowledges that it will have to continue to invest in maternal health care. Other maternal and sexual health-related services, such as family planning, will also need a boost.

To make the TBA programme sustainable in the long-term, it will be crucial that trained TBAs receive a level of remuneration that will encourage them to keep working in rural areas instead of seeking jobs at urban hospitals and clinics – like many skilled health workers have done in the past.

Marie Rose Mujawamariya from Kamonyi district, an hour south of Rwanda’s capital Kigali, is one of the TBAs who recently participated in the health department’s training programme.

She doesn’t receive a salary from the health ministry as yet, but says she hopes the training will help her create a better source of income for herself.

Where her clients previously negotiated a fee for her services, Mujawamariya plans to charge $10 per delivery based on her new skill set.

While Mujawamariya used to assist women to give birth based on what she learned from her grandmother, she now proudly talks about her new midwifery skills, such as checking up on the position of the unborn to make sure a natural birth can take place or gauging when medical assistance is necessary.

“I can now help women to deliver safely,” she declares.

Says Mujawamariya: “This move [to provide TBA training] gives hope that mother and child health will be taken care of.”

Excerpt:

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Aug 16 2010 (IPS)

Joelle Nsamira Kajuga, a female agricultural researcher has a ready answer to describe which modified crop will produce a higher yield, which will be resistant to bacteria, and which will ensure food security and generate a higher turnover for poor small-scale farmers in different regions in Rwanda.

Rwanda's small-scale farmers have relied on traditional seed varieties that mature after a long period and produce less output. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

In the tiny central African nation 60 percent of its population live below the poverty line and 90 percent of the land is mostly comprised of small holdings. But agriculture is Rwanda’s economic mainstay, contributing 40 percent of the country’s 3.4 billion dollar gross domestic product.

At the Rwanda Institute of Agriculture Research, Kajuga leads a team of researchers studying modified and improved seed to assess how small-scale farmers in the remote rural areas of Rwanda could adopt this seed, along with new agriculture practices, to increase their productivity.

Kajuga’s team is also developing new methods and practices to tackle diseases in crops. This includes investigating the effects of virulence factors on modified seed, specifically tree tomatoes and cassavas – crops which Kajuga believes can be used to eradicate malnutrition and generate income for rural communities.

Kajuga says that farmers in rural areas are barely able to meet their daily food needs and generate income, despite producing crops. She says this is because Rwanda’s small-scale farmers have relied on traditional seed varieties that mature after a long period and produce less output for every acre of planted crop.

In a country which is confronted with the increasing problem of limited land, Rwanda is 26,338 square-kilometres but has over 10 million people, ways to effectively farm what land is available is important.

“Rural communities have been growing a number of crops, but the yield has often been disappointingly low, making it much more difficult for small-scale farmers to cope,” she told IPS.

In Rutsiro district in west Rwanda, Kaguja and her team conducted field tests replacing the planting of tree tomatoes with modified sweets potatoes. They concluded that small-scale farmers have the capacity to triple their production if the right kind of farming skills and seeds were applied.

“(There are) no figures yet which show the extent these new modified crops could resolve the problem of hunger and malnutrition but the (research) has shown that implementation and success of the research will rely on the mindset of rural communities in these regions,” she said.

Kajuga emphasises that Rwandan farmers need to be trained and educated about the advantages of using improved seed.

“In order to change the image of small-scale farming in Rwanda (we need to) focus on training programmes on how to maintain the seedlings and disease management,” she told IPS.

According to Rwanda’s Ministry of Agriculture, in rural areas unemployment has affected more women than men – especially those involved in the farming. The Rwandan government has adopted a number of policies dedicated to promote new farming technologies in rural areas.

Mary Mukamabano, a 42-year-old mother of seven and cassava grower from Rutsiro district, believes small-scale farmers need to be educated on changing agriculture practices. She said this is because currently most of the land farmed by small-scale farmers in rural areas has proved insufficient to feed their families.

“It’s a challenge if someone is exploiting a plot of land that will never feed his family and generate at any income,” she told IPS.

Mukamabano said the hardest part of being a small-scale farmer is the “randomness” of her days and she would prefer to find a job other than farming. “What is most needed is to help us get other jobs instead of farming,” she said.

But Gloriose Nyiramatama, a maize and groundnut farmer in the southern Huye district does not want to change her profession. Instead she changed her crop.

“If we (really want) to move ahead with alternate farming ideas, we need research practices to enrich locals and also (need to be educated on) good agricultural practices,” said Nyiramatama.

Nyiramatama was able to effectively use research to increase her crop production. The mother of five stopped growing sweet potatoes and substituted it with groundnuts. She said that since changing her crop, she has generated a slightly higher income than she did when farming sweet potatoes and that “production is growing”.

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By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI and JOHANNESBURG, Jun 8 2010 (IPS)

The vast majority of businesses in Rwanda – like elsewhere in Africa – are informal. Government expects that a drive to register an estimated 900,000 informal enterprises will both strengthen these businesses and improve tax revenues.

Registration is essential to access to credit that could help Rwandan women traders establish profitable formal enterprises. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

She earned enough to sustain her family, but she was inspired to form a cooperative after attending a training programme aimed at empowering entrepreneurs.

Now as part of a ten-woman cooperative, she says her earnings have dramatically improved. Registering the cooperative as a formal business helped the women apply for a loan of one million Rwandan francs (about $1,700) with which they plan to expand their business further.

Suzan Nyirangwije who sells products imported from Dubai, has also seen positive returns since registering her business and receiving a loan.

“When I was running an informal business by myself, my daily turnover was very low but with my colleagues the shop now does over 300,000 Rwf ($500) worth of business every day,” she said.

Strengthening woman-owned businesses

Eraste Kabera, senior registrar at the agency tasked with the registration process, the Rwanda Development Board, told IPS the business registration system will benefit those who wish to access bank loans and micro-finance and those who wish to protect their intellectual property.

“We have seen that once they have experienced successful business performance, people in the informal sector almost always want to extend their activities,” Kabera explained.

Women comprise 54 percent of Rwanda’s population of nine million. Although there are no statistics available for women-owned businesses, the Rwandan government acknowledges that the majority of employees in both the formal and informal sectors are women.

The registration effort focuses on enterprises earning a minimum daily income equivalent to $20 and makes the process of registering as short and simple as possible. The costs have also been drastically reduced, from the equivalent of about $600 to just $43.

One of the key objectives of the Rwanda Development Board, the agency tasked with the registration process, is the sensitisation and mobilisation of women to invest in doing business.

But registration does not automatically guarantee loans for women-owned businesses. Many women in rural areas complain they still face difficulties in accessing loans under the Women’s Guarantee Fund , established last year.

Officials have dismissed the women’s concerns. “The government has established the necessary mechanism on micro loans for all financial institutions that lend to female entrepreneurs,” François Kanimba, the governor of the Central Bank told IPS in a 2009 interview.

At the time, the Central Bank reported that 6,568 women had benefitted from the credit scheme, drawing loans from $900,000 provided by government, international donors and NGOs.

Strengthening the economy as a whole

Government also plans to use the business registration scheme to develop a database of business activities that will contribute to economic planning. A key Rwanda government target under its economic roadmap, Vision 2020, is to reduce the country’s dependency on aid by increasing tax revenue.

When the Foreign Investment Advisory Service, a joint service of the International Finance Corporation and the World Bank, assessed Rwanda in 2005, the country’s 400 large firms and 3,000 registered small enterprises were hugely outnumbered by the estimated 900,000 firms in the informal sector. Registering these firms is one of the avenues government is using to boost the tax base.

But many informal sector workers find the prospect of paying taxes intimidating and it remains to be seen to what extent the business registration scheme will convince women in the informal sector to formalise their businesses.

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By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Feb 13 2010 (IPS)

Eighteen-year-old David Kimenyi* is sure he infected his girlfriend with HIV. They had unprotected sex many times, even after he discovered he was HIV-positive.

Only 10 percent of Rwanda's sexually active youth use condoms. Credit: Julius Mwelu/IRIN

“We used to enjoy a good time together and we trusted each other to have unprotected sex,” Kimenyi said of the girlfriend he began dating in 2008, not long after he went for an HIV test.

“After several times (of) having unprotected sex, I decided to tell her that I had AIDS,” Kimenyi said.

That was six months ago. Kimenyi’s girlfriend has left him since then.

In Rwanda, the HIV prevalence rate is estimated to be 3.1 percent according to the government’s 2008 Demographic and Health Survey.

But health officials are concerned that not enough is being done to contain the pandemic among teenagers.

A country-wide programme involving various stakeholders has been launched to tackle the rate of infection and increasing risky sexual behaviour among teenagers, officials from the National AIDS Control Commission (CNLS) said this week.

According to the results of a CNLS behavioural survey conducted in 2000, only 10 percent of the country’s sexually active youth use condoms.

“If teenagers are eager to have sex outside of their marital status, it is also important to educate them about how to reduce the risk of being infected with HIV,” Dr. Anitha Asimwe, the executive secretary of CNLS said.

Asimwe told local media that HIV infections in the country currently stand at one percent among youth aged between 15-24 years.

“In most cases, these teenagers don’t sometimes feel concerned to go for voluntary testing. The most discouraging issue is that most parents don’t want to talk to their children about sex, relationships and other related facts,” Asimwe said.

Kimenyi explained he had only gone for testing after contracting STDs.

“I decided to go for the test voluntarily because of certain diseases that I started to suffer from, particularly shingles, skin diseases and pneumonia,” Kimenyi said.

At Nakumatt, one of the main supermarkets in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, around 100 young people, mostly teenagers, come to enjoy a light moment. They share drinks, sitting around several plastic tables in the main entrance hall. They sit close together, close enough so that they can touch one another.

This was one of Kimenyi’s hangouts. Most of the young boys and girls frequenting public places like the new supermarket in Kigali are interested in having a good time.

And if a girl and boy meet, like each other, and end up going home with each other afterwards, there is a high possibility they will have unprotected sex.

Official figures from government state the the lowest prevalence of HIV, at 0.5 percent, is among teenagers aged between 15-19 years. But Bonaventure Ntagengwa, the coordinator of a youth centre for reproductive health based in Kigali, observes that most teenagers appear to have lost their fear of the disease.

Many teenagers, like Kimenyi, also find it difficult to ask their sexual partners if they have been tested for HIV, or to even discuss their own status, health officials say.

Kimenyi admits he never told his girlfriend his status because he was trying to ‘ignore’ it.

“Raising the issue of (your) HIV status sometimes contribute(s) to (a) breakdown in mutual confidence and friendship,” Kimenyi told IPS. Though in his case, it did not.

Dr. Agnes Binagwaho, the permanent secretary in the Rwandan ministry of health, said emphasis should also be placed on several other campaigns such as male circumcision – which could contribute to reducing the rate of HIV infection especially among the youth.

“Rwandan youth must be free to make choices to reduce HIV/AIDS and they deserve to be in a community where safety is real,” Binagwaho said.

Asimwe said teenagers needed to be sufficiently educated about HIV to reduce their risk of contracting the virus.

“Teenagers are the first target of HIV/AIDS because of insufficient sensitisation campaigns, thus (there is) a growing risk (of infection among teenagers) if no appropriate measures to reduce the rate transmission are taken,” Asimwe said.

*Name changed to protect identity of minor.

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By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Jul 30 2009 (IPS)

In early July, Rwandan officials announced a new programme that aims to strengthen women's economic capacity by providing more access to credit and enabling them to start income generating projects.

The lives of rural women are changing thanks to the new credit scheme, says govt. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IRIN

On Jul. 7, the Rwandan minister of gender and family promotion, Jean d'Arc Mujawamariya, told members of parliament (MPs) that the fund was working efficiently.

Some of the projects that qualified for funding included coffee farms, shops, agribusiness and tourism, according to the central bank.

Some MPs, however, pointed out that the selection process was not as rigorous as required – a point that minister Mujawamariya did not challenge.

While reiterating the government's commitment to empower women economically in an interview with IPS, François Kanimba, the director-general of the central bank, said, "but we need to make sure that the services given (through the programme) are contributing to promote employment and alleviate endemic poverty in most rural areas."

The way forward, according to the central bank's director general, is to evaluate each project on its own merit. "No doubt all actors have common views on the advantages of the Women Guarantee Fund, but the issue here is the kind of project that has to be subsidised, when beneficiaries are applying to access loans from (the central) bank," he said.

The Rwanda central bank has established a mechanism of micro loans for all financial institutions that lend to female entrepreneurs. Loans for projects declared viable are against collateral guarantees, to be paid back over a long period.

Since the establishment of this new credit scheme early this year, at least 6,568 women have received assistance for micro- and small enterprises from the government, international donors and NGOs worth 890,000 U.S. dollars, according to the central bank.

According to Kanimba, many of these are associations that own both coffee farms and shops, for instance, in a new initiative to finance the reduction of poverty.

The associations "served as (one of) the main tools to address the multiple causes of poverty, unemployment and social exclusion especially in rural areas," minister Mujawamariya remarked. "Slowly but surely, the lives of rural women are changing following the new credit scheme," she told IPS.

But businesswoman Solange Uwimbabazi, who runs a shop at Nyabugogo market near Kigali city, insists that it is quite difficult for poor women to access credit in a situation where the process of allocation of loans by banks is far from transparent.

"There is discrimination," the entrepreneur, a mother of five, observes. "Some groups of women are excluded to benefit from loans. The wealthiest groups are considered the most," she adds.

In addition, there are complaints that women applying for credit have to put up with the rudeness of bank managers who pull them up for not fulfilling all the procedural requirements for loans.

"In many cases, people applying for loans don't justify how their project will generate income to pay back the credit," Kanimba, the central bank's director general told IPS.

"The funds are available, but people need to be educated enough on how they will manage their project and they must show that they have the capacity of ownership. (Were the business to fail) they should not be looking for scapegoats elsewhere," he said.

The Rwanda government insists the terms and conditions for loan application are very strict, and they cannot be accused of favouritism.

The government has begun a training scheme to educate women on how they can access loans for economic empowerment.

"There is a need to educate women on how they file their application for credit to the banks… In most cases, formal financial institutions are less receptive and welcoming of female entrepreneurs," minister Mujawamaliya told IPS.

At least 82 women (trainers of trainees) have been trained and will be training other women countrywide, according to an official count.

Meanwhile, the government appears optimistic the credit scheme will benefit a large number of women.

But disappointed civil society activists say the programme has not yet reached large numbers of poor borrowers in rural area, despite government efforts to overcome this situation.

"If there are no mechanisms to expand credit schemes, in order to reach women in rural areas, the situation could jeopardise the government's efforts to alleviate poverty," a civil society activist who requested anonymity told IPS.

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By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Oct 4 2008 (IPS)

Rwanda is hoping to convince the International Criminal Tribunal to change its mind over refusing to transfer three genocide suspects to face trial at home, paving the way for extradition procedures to start against dozens of others living abroad in freedom.

In rulings in May and June, the Tanzania-based ICTR blocked applications to hand over the three suspects on the grounds that they might not receive fair trials in Rwanda.

The three are alleged to have committed crimes against humanity in the 1994 genocide where 800,000 people, mainly ethnic Tutsis, were massacred.

In three separate but largely similar rulings, ICTR judges raised doubts about the independence of the Rwandan judiciary. Guarantees against outside government pressure on the courts were missing.

Judges also expressed concern that defence witnesses could face intimidation. The Rwandan witness protection programme was not robust enough to guarantee them protection.

Some judges were unwilling to hand over the accused because they might face inhumane prison conditions, including isolation and solitary confinement, if convicted.

The ICTR rulings were issued as its U.N. mandate for prosecuting the principle people allegedly responsible for the 1994 genocide draws to a close. All trials should be completed by the end of 2008, a goal which is unlikely to be met.

So far, ICTR judges have sentenced 30 people and acquitted five. Eight suspects are still awaiting trial.

The decisions to refuse to hand over the three are a blow to Rwanda's aim of securing the extradition of others who fled the country at the end of the genocide. In any extradition proceedings, suspects could cite the ICTR view that fair trial conditions do not yet exist in Rwanda, despite massive help from the international community.

In 2007, Rwanda rushed though a bill to abolish the death penalty, removing a major barrier to extradition posted by the ICTR and many abolitionist countries where the accused had fled.

Rwanda had a list of 97 people it wanted to extradite for allegedly masterminding or participating in the genocide, Tharcisse Karugarama, minister of justice, told IPS.

"Most of those wanted are still free … in many European countries and in North America."

Their return to face justice in Rwanda was essential for national reconciliation, Theodore Simburudali, president of Ibuka, one of the main genocide survivors' organisations, told IPS.

Rwanda has been allowed to submit written appeals against the blocking of the transfer of the three. Its lawyers will also be allowed to back-up their arguments by appearing before ICTR judges.

The ICTR recognised the progress that had made in reforming Rwanda's judiciary system, but "some more requirements" were necessary, Hassan Bubacar Jallow, the chief ICTR prosecutor, told IPS.

His comment suggests that ICTR judges could reverse their decisions if Rwanda could show it was introducing more judicial and penal reforms.

In reaching their decisions, ICTR judges listened to the views of four NGOs, including Human Rights Watch. HRW questioned the independence of the Rwandan judiciary.

ICTR judges ruling in the case of Yusuf Manyakazi, a former businessman and farmer, suggested that this concern could be met by having a panel of trial judges. Three or more judges were less likely to bend to pressure from outside than a single judge.

But Martin Ngoga, a senior Rwandan prosecutor, rejected any need for changes to the present trial system. "Rwanda has already put in place all the necessary mechanisms to guarantee the international legal rights of the accused to a fair trail," he told IPS. "Many of those who committed genocide have already been convicted in Rwanda and all trials have been carried out with fairness and impartiality."

NGOs also gave evidence to the ICTR about the poor prison conditions in Rwanda. Death row was abolished when life imprisonment replaced capital punishment in 2007, but inmates now serving life terms were said to be held in inhumane conditions, including solitary confinement. But Karugarama denied this. "Rwanda has already responded to these allegations", he said. Carina Tertsakian, a human rights activist and researcher, in her book, Le Château: the lives of prisoners in Rwanda, tells the story of life in Rwanda’s prisons in the ten years which followed the 1994 genocide. "Forty centimetres is the standard width of a prisoner's individual space, where he sleeps, where he eats, where he sits, where he lives," she writes.

"Every aspect of prison life in Rwanda is defined by overcrowding."

Despite this, in March Rwanda qualified as the seventh country to receive prisoners sentenced by the ICTR to serve out their sentences. Adama Dieng, assistant secretary-general of the U.N., said at the time that he expected that Rwanda would take the necessary steps to implement this agreement. His comments suggest that Rwanda will be given time and help to improve its prison conditions before the actual transfer of convicted prisoners takes place.

(*The story moved Sep. 23, 2008 erroneously identified Carina Tertsakian as a researcher for Penal Reform International. Ms Tertsakian independently researched and produced her book on Rwanda’s prisons which is published by Arves Books, London)

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By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Feb 21 2008 (IPS)

Certain medical workers in Rwanda have expressed concern about the country’s campaign to promote male circumcision as a means of curbing the spread of HIV. They fear that in a country with low levels of knowledge about sexual health, people could mistakenly believe the procedure offers complete protection against the virus.

An epidemiologist based in the capital, Kigali, said there was a risk of “a bloodbath in the country once circumcision is taken as an anti-AIDS measure.”

Cyriaque Twagirumukiza, a general practitioner in the city, is also apprehensive: “Most of the difficulties relate to convincing men that circumcision does not exclude…the use of condoms during sex.”

The campaign got underway this month amidst figures showing that HIV prevalence is on the rise in this Central African nation – from three to 3.6 percent during the past year, according to government.

A number of studies have indicated that circumcision – which involves the removal of part or all of the foreskin from the penis – substantially reduces a man’s risk of contracting HIV during penile-vaginal intercourse.

Trials sponsored by the National Institutes of Health in the United States and the Canadian Institute of Health Research in Kenya and Uganda have shown a 53 percent and 51 percent decline in risk, respectively. Similar findings were made during a study funded by the French National Agency for Research on AIDS that was carried out in South Africa; results of this research, published in 2005, indicated a minimum 60 percent reduction in infection.

The inner, mucous membrane of the foreskin is said to have a greater number of cells that are targets for the HI-virus – notably Langerhans cells – than the external surface of the skin, making it more vulnerable to infection than other penile tissue. (Langerhans cells are immune system cells located in the skin.)

In addition, the warm, humid area between the foreskin and penis head is seen as a favourable environment for HIV, which may also be able to penetrate the foreskin because of other factors.

Noting that circumcision cannot provide a complete safeguard against HIV, health workers emphasise the need for other protective measures.

“It is…critical to ensure that clear and correct information on the continuing need for other HIV prevention measures is also provided,” say the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) in a March 2007 document, ‘New Data on Male Circumcision and HIV Prevention: Policy and Programme Implications’.

“Communities, and particularly men opting for the procedure and their partners, require careful and balanced information and education materials that underline that male circumcision is not a ‘magic bullet’ for HIV prevention but is complementary to other ways of reducing risk of HIV infection.”

Innocent Nyaruhirira, secretary of state in charge of fighting AIDS and other diseases, acknowledges that “more time is needed to sensitise all people” about the potential benefits of circumcision.

Nonetheless, government is pushing ahead with the initiative, notably as concerns new-borns, and groups such as students and soldiers, although there are no published figures as yet for the number of people circumcised since the start of the campaign.

In the surgical waiting room at the University Hospital Centre of Butare, in the south of Rwanda, queues can be seen every Thursday as various groups of people – the overwhelming majority of them teenagers – wait their turn with a doctor to be circumcised.

The health ministry has also started to provide medical equipment for circumcision to all health centres in the country.

According to the WHO and UNAIDS, “Integrated approaches to deliver male circumcision services with other essential HIV and sexual health services are most likely to be sustainable in the longer term.”

“However, vertical, stand-alone programmes that provide the recommended minimum package of services may be useful in the short term to expand access to safe male circumcision services and to train providers in standardized procedures, especially where demand is high and health systems are weak.”

At present, Rwandan parents normally circumcise their new-borns for social, cultural or religious reasons – although more than 80 percent of the population is Christian, and does not have circumcision as a religious requirement (most Muslim and Jewish men are circumcised).

For Yvonne Umubyeyi, who took her two-year-old son for a consultation on circumcision, having the procedure carried out is a matter of good hygiene: “The intention is not to protect my son against AIDS in the future,” she told IPS.

Some claim that circumcision is said to reduce instances of urinary tract infections and cancer of the penis, among other diseases. However, others dispute this view.

“The current consensus of most experts is that circumcision should not be recommended as a prevention strategy for penile cancer,” notes the American Cancer Society on its website.

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