Rwanda’s Food System Transformation

Rwanda is making significant strides at developing a sustainable food system. Centering initiatives on its flagship development program, Vision 2020, the government has placed high priority on land tenure reforms, rural development, agricultural investment, and climate-smart and gender-sensitive approaches. Increasingly, the government is encouraging private sector involvement by reducing barriers to doing business, thus attracting foreign investors along the entire food value chain. Despite great progress, such as improving productivity of staple food production, hunger and undernutrition are big challenges that Rwanda still faces. Land tenure reforms, on the other hand, present a mixed picture—despite increasing food production, the government’s approach to land-use consolidation, regional crop specialization, and monocropping could prevent smallholders from using, managing and benefiting from their land.

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