Land husbandry, Water harvesting and Hillside irrigation (LWH) project

The main objective of the LWH project in Rwanda is to increase agricultural productivity and commercialization of hillside agriculture in pilot watersheds covering 30 250 hectares. It was achieved by using a modified watershed approach, introducing sustainable land husbandry measures for hillside agriculture and developing hillside irrigation.

The project includes three components for a total cost of US$ 45.07 million:

- Capacity development and institutional strengthening for hillside intensification.

- Infrastructure for hillside intensification.

- Project management.

The carbon balance appraisal only analyzes the World Bank financed Land husbandry, Water harvesting and hillside irrigation project (four sites covering about 4163 ha) of the Government of Rwanda.

Main outputs

The Kirehe Community-based Watershed Management Project (KWAMP)

Rwanda has launched his Vision 2020 which aims at transforming it from a low-income country into a middle-income country by the year 2020. This ambition would be realized around six pillars, one of them being a productive and market oriented agriculture. The Strategic Plan for Agricultural Transformation (PSTA) forms the framework for enhancing agricultural development.

The KWAMP project, funded at 50% by IFAD with other stakeholders, is a first step toward the full implementation of the PSTA strategy. It aims at promoting poor smallholders of Kirehe district to overcome food insecurity and low agricultural incomes, to arrest land degradation and restore soil fertility.  

The project is intended to result in:
- an increased level of marketed production of crops and livestock products, leading to increases in incomes derived from gains in productivity, farming efficiency and cash returns to effort;  
- the operation and maintenance of affordable irrigation facilities made available to a large proportion of the active poor and landless farmers in the District, reducing dependence on increasingly erratic rains and permitting a shift to higher value crops in response to market demand;  
- a steady improvement in the natural resource base in selected watersheds to enable production in the future, reversing the present negative trends of soil erosion and nutrient depletion coupled with failure to put available water to productive use.

The carbon balance assessment of the KWAMP demonstrates a net sink of 1.2 million t CO2e over a period of 20 years, i.e. 2.1 t CO2e/ha/year.