3. BACKGROUND INFORMATION

3.1 Geography and Climate

3.1.1 Rwanda is a mountainous, land-locked country on the watershed between the headwaters of the Zaire and the Nile, with an area of 26 338 km². It includes part of a major freshwater lake, Lake Kivu, numerous smaller bodies of fresh water and many rivers. The underlying rocks are volcanic but in many areas the gentler slopes are overlain by blanket bog (marais).

3.1.2 Two major climatic zones can be distinguished (Morris, 1979):

1. the zone between 1 300 m and 1 900 m in altitude (mostly over 1 500 m) which has two rainy seasons and an average annual rainfall of 1 000 mm to 1 100 mm. The average annual temperature is 20°C;

2. the zone located along the Zaire-Nile watershed and the volcanic slopes, above 1 900 m and reaching over 2 500 m. Isothermal conditions prevail, according to altitude; the average mean annual temperature is 16°C. The lower part of this zone has a 2–3 month dry season; annual rainfall is 1 200 mm – 1 400 mm. The higher areas have no dry season and rainfall is greater.

In the eastern and south-eastern fringes of the country, at altitudes below 1 000 m, rainfall is less than 800 mm in places.

3.1.3 Extreme and average air temperatures in some localities are given in Table 1, which is taken from the Bulletin Climatologique du Rwanda, Année 1977. There is little recorded information on the temperature of the waters in the major rivers and lakes.

Table 1

Extreme Air Temperature and Average Annual Air Temperature (°C)

Tx = average maximum temperature
Tn = average minimum temperature
TM = average temperature
TA = absolute maximum
Ta = absolute minimum

3.2 Population

3.2.1 Total population in 1978 was estimated at 4.8 million. It is believed to be growing at about 4 percent per annum, and is expected to double by the end of the century. The largest city is Kigali, the capital, with a population of 120 000; the next largest is Butare, the university town, with a population of 20 000. Ninety-five percent of the population live in the countryside. There are few villages, most people living in individual family settlements. The density of population varies from about 80 persons per square kilometre to 500; the average density is over 180/km², making Rwanda the most densely populated country in Africa.

3.2.2 The major ethnic group, the Bahutu, constitute nearly 90 percent of the population; they are traditionally cultivators rather than herdsmen.

In 1970, only 5 percent of the population were engaged in wage labour, the remainder being independent farmers.

3.2.3 The absolute poverty level is put at U.S.$ 65/year for the rural population and U.S.$ 120/year for urban dwellers. It is estimated (IBRD, 1977) that the incomes of 30 percent of the rural population and 60 percent of the urban are below this level.

3.2.4 Administratively, Rwanda is organized into ten prefectures, which are sub-divided in turn into 143 communes; these into 1 600 sectors; the sectors each into ten collines. The prefects, and the burgomasters in charge of the communes, are appointed officials. The administrative heads of the sectors and collines are elected.

3.3 Land Tenure and Use

3.3.1 Delepierre and Préfol (1972) estimate that of the total land resources of 2.6 million hectares, 1.25 million were suitable for farming, and only 102 000 ha of these were not already under cultivation in 1974 (IBRD, 1976); this land was however being taken into cultivation at a rate of 3.5 percent/annum. The same IBRD report put the total area of marshland (bogs, marais) at 84 000 ha, although Morris (1979) states a figure of 48 000 ha; of this, perhaps 20 000 to 30 000 ha might be usable for fish culture (Monnon, pers.comm., 1980).

3.3.2 Morris (1979) distinguishes four agricultural zones:

1. the lowlands in the east and southeast
2. the central plateau where more than half the population live
3. the highlands
4. the western plateau

Details of soil types, rainfall, crops and population quoted by Morris after Delepierre, are given in Annex 1.

3.3.3 In 1975, a total of about 830 000 farms with a statistical mean holding of about 1 ha (0.91 ha in 1979) existed in Rwanda. The average, by prefecture, is shown in Table 2.

Table 2

Areas of Family Farms by Prefecture

Source: IBRD, 1977

In the Byumba Prefecture the size distribution in 1973 was as follows (IBRD, 1977):

1. 36% of the farms have less than 80 ares (half the average);

2. 35% of the farms have between 80 and 160 ares (between half the average and the average);

3. 29% of the farms have more than 160 ares (the average) and the largest are five times the size of the average.

The study also showed a fragmentation of the farm into an average of five fields, some of which were 15 to 30 minutes walking distance from the homestead.

3.3.4 Agricultural production has traditionally been and still is based on the nucleus family. The nucleus family comprises the farmer, his wife (or wives, because of the once widespread, but lately diminishing, practice of polygamy), and their unmarried children. It may also include unmarried brothers or sisters and the old. The nucleus family produces for subsistence and the market, forming an almost self-sufficient and independent production unit. Inheritance is patrilinear, i.e., the father will pass on house, land, tools, etc. to his sons. If he has more sons than the existing land will support, he has to claim new land for them by bringing it under cultivation. The role of larger kinship groups, which formerly had a strong influence in land allocation, has been increasingly taken over by the administration (commune), which now have to approve any land transfer.

Farmers have a traditional, rather than a legally defined right to land. Legally all land belongs to the Government and transfers of land-use rights or allocation of newly cultivated land have to be approved by the burgomaster of the respective commune. In some areas a trend to buy land-use rights has been reported in recent years. Financially better-off farmers, usually the ones who grow mainly cash crops, thus gain control of seven or more hectares and employ the former cultivators on a full-time wage labour basis.

3.3.5 The greater part of the farm produce is consumed by the farmers themselves; it is estimated that only 41.9 percent of the total rural production is marketed. The following table gives an overview of the scale of marketing according to the sectors of the economy:

Table 3

Proportion of Goods and Services Entering the Market

Source: Ministère du Plan, Année 1976, Projections, In: IBRD, 1977

3.3.6 The cash crops - coffee, tea, pyrethrum, cinchona bark and so on - account for three-quarters of all earnings of foreign exchange. The Government exercises direct influence on farmers to increase cash crop production. In the Government organized settlement schemes, farmers are obliged to produce a certain quota of cash crops, otherwise their land-use right is threatened.

3.4 Food Supplies

3.4.1 Traditionally, Rwanda has been self-sufficient as regards food. Now, however, population growth is outstripping food production; at the same time there is a continuing and growing need to earn foreign exchange by cultivation of cash crops. As already noted, uncultivated but fertile land is becoming scarce.

3.4.2 The average diet amounts to only about 2 000 calories per caput a day and is apparently deficient in animal protein. (The normal sources of animal protein in Rwanda are cattle, goats, sheep, pigs and poultry, dairy products, fish and a little game. Morris (1979) quotes the following figures for consumption of foods rich in animal protein: meat from 0.5 kg/year to 18.9 kg/year/head; fish, zero to 5.6 kg/year; milk, 0.8 1/year to 17.8 1/year. The official figures for fish production suggest an average consumption of 0.175 kg/year; this estimate may be low since about four-fifths of what is produced is consumed without entering any channel of trade (Table 3). Nevertheless, given that to get 30 g of animal protein per day it is necessary to consume between 140 g and 220 g of fresh meat or fish a day, i.e., 50 to 80 kg/year, it is fairly certain that the average diet in Rwanda provides too little animal protein.)

3.4.3 The Government is taking active steps to intensify and diversify both food production and export crop production, in order to meet the nutritional demands of the increasing population to raise rural incomes and to generate rural employment.

3.4.4 It would be difficult to expand meat production, both for reasons of tradition and because good pasture land is scarce. Good arable land, as already noted, is also becoming scarce, but there are possibilities of cultivating the ‘marais’ (marshlands). Formerly, the then feudal elite, the Tutsi, reserved bottom land for cattle grazing. Studies of how the ‘marais’ could be better utilized have been under way for a number of years.

The fringes of many marshes are already being used by farmers as a valuable complement to their rain-fed farm land on the hill slopes. In this way, the farming system has a better use of labour in the dry seasons at a very low investment cost (Morris, 1979).

An additional way of utilizing the ‘marais’ for food production would be cultivation of fish in ponds, and this is the main opportunity for increased fish production.

3.4.5 Taking all these factors into consideration, the Government have accorded high priority to the expansion of fish production both by capture fisheries and by aquaculture.