Rwanda is the first country in the world where women hold a parliamentary majority and new laws have given women rights to land, employment opportunities and education. Now, in the most remote parts of the country, gender equality is going a long way to reducing poverty.

Aveuglée par une politique de libre-échange poussée à l'extrême, la Commission européenne s'apprête à imposer à plusieurs États africains, dans l'indifférence quasi-totale, des Accords de Partenariat Économique (APE) déséquilibrés par un rapport de force à l'avantage du continent européen. Malgré les mises en garde nombreuses et répétées sur les effets dramatiques...

The Regional Initiative seeks to strengthen the programmes, mechanisms, capacity and delivery of actions needed to operationalize commitments to end hunger by 2025, and to support mapping exercises that identify gaps and determine requisite interventions to enhance policy dialogue on food security and nutrition, both at regional and country levels....

Sub-Saharan Africa is generally characterized by low production and productivity in the agriculture sector, despite rapidly growing human population which calls for closing the production gap in crops, livestock, forestry, aquaculture and fisheries. At the same time, ecosystems are under pressure, a situation which is further challenged by climate change,...

Based on experience and lessons learned in 2014-15, Africa’s Regional Initiative 2 (RI2) (originally entitled “Integrated Management of Agricultural Landscapes in Africa”) has been revamped for implementation in 2016-17 to sharpen its focus and to make it more programmatic. It takes a food systems approach with two integrated components, namely...

In September 2015, countries adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This will shape their development programmes in a transformational way for the next 15 years. At the last FAO Regional Conference for Africa, held in Abidjan in April 2016, many delegates asked the organization to assist countries in their...

The present report summarizes findings of the first PtoP case study on rural women’s economic empowerment and focuses on the public works component of Rwanda’s Vision 2020 Umurenge Programme (VUP) – the Government of Rwanda’s flagship programme for poverty reduction providing countrywide social protection. The research was based on a...

In Africa, small-scale agriculture – including post-production activities such as handling, processing and marketing – is a major source of income in rural areas. In recent years, women have increased their role in the rural sector significantly, and their contribution to household and commercial agriculture is fundamental. Empowering and investing...

Food crops represent one third of Rwanda’s GDP, but the supply remains fragile due to soil pests such as white grubs, cut worm and bean fly which damage vegetable and root crops. Options for control are limited. A team from China, Africa, the UK and Switzerland is working with the...

Since 2012, national teams in eight countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America have been identifying options for policy, legal and administrative mechanisms for the implementation of the multilateral system of access and benefit sharing (MLS) for plant genetic resources. This article summarises if and how access and benefit sharing...

The great lakes region of Central Africa is beautiful and abundant in hills, people and conflicts. Its high altitude and cooler climate make it ideal for crops. But soils have been exhausted, spare land is rarely available, and competition and struggle for resources has marked much of the region’s history...

ASARECA and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) are undertaking a joint initiative to explore innovative, spatial and cost-effective data collection methods to monitor the adoption and diffusion of agricultural technologies.  Simply put, the project: “Monitoring the Geospatial Diffusion of Agricultural Technologies”, is expected to generate data, knowledge and...

FAO Sub-Regional Office for East Africa and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) have signed a partnership agreement to coordinate cross-border efforts on animal health, trade and natural resources management coordination.  The programme will address community engagement on policy and investment as well as cross cutting areas of work such...

With regard to genderdifferentiated impacts on child-specific outcomes, in Lesotho the programme had a strong positive impact on school enrolment and time spent in school (mainly driven by girls) and on a reduction of farm work (mainly driven by boys) for children aged 13–17. These gendered outcomes were also influenced...

How best to help smallholder farmers access information and advice they need to increase their productivity is an unsolved puzzle. Work led by the World Agroforestry Centre and the International Livestock Research Institute with support from the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) and other partners in...

In agroecology, farmers continuously build situation-specific knowledge that allows them to develop under unpredictable and changing circumstances. There are no  fixed prescriptions in agroecology about how to produce, process, market or store food, feed, medicine and fibre. Rather, different practices work in different ways depending on each specific context and ecosystem....

A platform of farmers, retailers and service providers,civil society organisations, NGOs, government officials, and researchers improves livelihoods in Rwanda. Through interaction and collaboration, these groups experiment with various technological and institutional innovations, thereby tackling local agricultural challenges. This experience illustrates the importance of institutionalising a space where knowledge can be...

Sustainability is the cornerstone of FAORwanda’s work, from building the resilience of Rwandan families to supporting the domestication of the Sustainable Development Goals. Explore these initiatives and more in this quarter’s newsletter

Success stories and lessons learnt are discussed at an event in the Rwandese capital, concluding a project on the improvement of food security in cross-border districts of Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda, in support of the modernization of agriculture under the NEPAD-CAADP framework. With the objective of...

The countries of East and Southern Africa have made major commitments to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment, and they are starting to pay off. A number of countries have achieved substantial progress towards gender parity in primary school enrolment. Nearly all countries have adopted quota systems requiring women’s participation...