Sustainable Rural Development in Rwanda: The Importance of a Focus onWomen in Agriculture

Abstract

Rwanda is most well known internationally for the shocking 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in which over 800,000 people were cruelly slaughtered and over 300,000 women were brutally raped in 100 days. The nation’s second most widely known characteristic is that it leads the world in the representation of women among decision-makers and in Parliament: the only country with a majority of women in its Chamber of Deputies and, at 64 percent, a substantial one. This paper examines a third important facet: the place of gender in agriculture and agricultural extension in economic development and poverty reduction in Rwanda. It is this aspect that is the particular focus of this paper, which suggests that Rwanda is an important case study for Pakistan to consider. Gender equality and women’s empowerment are critical components of any program for sustainable development and poverty reduction. In Rwanda, where agriculture is the backbone of the domestic economy, women are much more likely than men to work in agricultural occupations, and are more likely to depend on their farm work for income. The Government of Rwanda has been a world leader in its commitment to gender equality, through legal reforms that guarantee women a representative voice in public policy, a commitment to increasing the enrollment of girls in primary and secondary schools, and institutional reforms that ensure accountability for gender sensitive policies. Nevertheless, women’s effective participation in programs targeting economic development, particularly in the agricultural sector, has lagged. Women continue to face challenges caused by poor skills and lack of effective organizations, limited access to improvements like seeds and fertilizers to support greater productivity on small farms, soil degradation, weak coordination of agricultural actors and insufficient collaboration between farmers-researchers and extension workers. In part as a result, Rwanda remains one of the poorest countries in the world, despite having made extraordinary progress in decreasing rural poverty. To overcome the challenges facing farmers and ensure women’s inclusion, the Government of Rwanda has adopted the Agriculture Gender Strategy. The Strategy lays out clear steps to ensure that the programs and activities targeting the agricultural sector set a strong foundation for equal rights and equal opportunities for both women and men in rural development. The Agriculture Gender Strategy serves as a complement to other policies, including the National Agricultural Extension Strategy, whose collective vision is to ensure ideal conditions for the dissemination and exchange of information between producers, farmer organizations and other partners in order to transform and to modernize the agricultural sector so that it can effectively contribute to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, Vision 2020, and the Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy objectives. This paper analyzed the challenges facing the agricultural sector, particularly Rwanda’s women farmers, analyze the strategies Rwanda is using to meet these challenges, and suggest good practice from Rwanda’s experience that might be relevant for consideration by Pakistan and other countries represented at this conference