BUJUMBURA May 26th (ABP) – The Assistant to the Minister of the Environment, Agriculture and Livestock, Mr. Emmanuel Ndorimana, proceeded, on Thursday, May 24, 2023, to the official launch of the “kugwiza” project which aims accelerate the availability of agricultural production technologies, tools and practices that will help smallholder farmers increase their productivity, efficiency and incomes.
In his remarks, the assistant to the Minister responsible for agriculture indicated that this project is an initiative for the accelerated dissemination of agricultural innovations in the Great Lakes region, in order to contribute to the achievement of the development goals of the country. He specified that agriculture is an activity that concerns Burundi. But he stressed that this project is facing challenges related to limited access to quality seeds, speculations observed in the seed production chain, challenges related to seed treatment and storage, and so forth.
Mr. Ndorimana therefore thanked USAID for its financial support for that project to intervene in the food and nutrition sector. He added that this project plans to reach 500 thousand agro-pastoralists by 2024, before specifying that the project has a real sensitivity marked by the improvement of the subsistence system of the most vulnerable segments in Burundian society shaken by climate change and population growth as well as the Covid-19 pandemic.
He took the opportunity to call on the officials of the said ministry to strengthen the actions undertaken by the said project in the value chains of beans, maize, rice, sweet potatoes, cassava and poultry.
The Director of the kugwiza project Mr. Matieyedou Abdou kanlambique, indicated that this project concerns three countries namely Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. He specified that at the level of Burundi, the project concerns all the provinces, but he pointed out that there are targeted communes.
Mr. Abdou said that this project aims to contribute to food and nutritional security through rapid dissemination of agricultural innovations developed and available in the country. He also stressed that this project will allow producers to know the technologies that are being developed and to try them to be able to appreciate them.
With regard to innovations in relation to that project, he said that the latter come from the different facilities working together with the national agricultural research institute in Burundi, the national rice research institute, the sweet potato, potato institutes and others, as well as the international livestock research institute, which has developed innovations in artificial dissemination as well as fodder for animal feed, and so on.
He recalled that this project concerns crops such as rice, beans, sweet potato, the milk value chain, cows and chicken, bananas and cassava. He pointed out that the said project concerns anyone, any categories combined, and that it will last two years with an amount equivalent to 20 million US dollars in the region, including four million US dollars for Burundi.