Rome, 5 March 2024 – Various technological, financial, social and institutional innovations were introduced in IFAD’s portfolio in Rwanda, addressing key agricultural challenges. Steven Jonckheere, Senior Evaluation Officer at the Independent Office of Evaluation of IFAD (IOE), presented these results during the national workshop organized to discuss the findings of the Country Strategy and Programme Evaluation (CSPE) of the Republic of Rwanda, on 5 March 2022.

Innovations included intensive rice cultivation, improved animal breeds, a performance-based grant facility, community competitions for natural resource management and public-private-producer partnerships. These efforts contributed to enhancing productivity and, in some cases, to structural change.

“The evaluation found strong alignment of the country programme with government priorities. It built on IFAD’s comparative advantage in support of smallholders, to boost productivity and access to markets by focusing on investment in livestock, agricultural export and irrigation”, noted Fabrizio Felloni, IOE Deputy Director, speaking on behalf of Dr Indran A. Naidoo, IOE Director.

Co-organized by the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources of the Republic of Rwanda and IOE, in collaboration with IFAD’s East and Southern Africa Division (ESA), the on-line virtual workshop brought together a wealth of high-level attendants, including the Honourable Dr Ildephonse Musafiri, Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources; Sarah Nyiramutangwa, Head of the Single Project Implementation Unit, Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources; Donal Brown, Associate Vice-President, Programme Management Department, IFAD; and Sara Mbago-Bhunu, Regional Director, ESA, IFAD. Over 50 participants joined the event, representing the government of Rwanda, including from the Ministry of Economic Planning and Finance; the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources; the Rwanda Agriculture and Animal Resources Development Board; the National Agricultural Export Development Board; and the Single Project Implementation Unit. A host of development partners, civil society organizations, private sector partners, and IFAD senior management and staff also attended the workshop.

“I look forward to discussing the findings and reflecting on them, to make sure that implementation of future projects is even better. Most importantly, we need to ensure sustainability of interventions”, said the Honourable Dr Musafiri.

The CSPE was the third country-level evaluation in Rwanda, and covered the period 2013–2022. It focused on nine loan-funded projects and 24 IFAD-funded grants. The estimated cost of the nine investment projects covered by the CSPE amounts to US$509.6 million, of which US$280.1 million was financed by IFAD. The remaining funds came from the Government, other co-financiers and beneficiaries.

“Together, the Government of Rwanda and IFAD have achieved significant progress in promoting rural development, and I would like to strongly reiterate IFAD’s commitment to continue supporting the Government and the people of Rwanda to improve the livelihoods”, affirmed Dr Brown.

During the workshop, participants discussed the main findings, recommendations and issues emerging from the CSPE. The meeting also provided an opportunity to focus on the opportunities and challenges of the partnership between IFAD and the Government in the near future, and discuss strategic priorities for IFAD's upcoming programme.

The country programme contributed to improving food security, mainly through increasing food availability and access, including by increasing the production of staple and horticultural crops, reducing post-harvest losses and introducing livestock. It also contributed to increasing incomes by improving production and productivity, reducing post-harvest losses, diversifying to higher value crops, and adopting group selling, price mechanisms, and new sources of income.

Individual projects reached or exceeded their outreach appraisal targets in terms of persons receiving services promoted or supported by project interventions, and contributed to product, process and functional upgrading, whilst building the capacities of producers’ organizations. Strengthening technical skills, supplying agricultural inputs and supporting irrigated agriculture contributed to productivity increases.

Unfortunately, the project designs did not include nutrition-sensitive interventions in a strategic manner. Consequently, few activities addressed the main cause of malnutrition, namely, the limited consumption of nutritionally diverse foods. Projects often applied a blanket approach, without tailoring interventions to the actual needs of the target groups and context, while increases in a number of commodities failed to meet expectations and were not always sustainable.

Very limited results were achieved in fostering financial inclusion, with an overreliance on the use of matching grants and insufficient outreach. The supported cooperatives remained generally inadequate, particularly in terms of leadership, income generation, governance and record keeping. In addition, their business orientation and vertical linkages among stakeholders at different functional levels remained weak.

Seeking to further strengthen the impact of IFAD’s operations in Rwanda, it is recommended that in future programmes the Fund should focus on thematic areas in which it has demonstrated a comparative advantage, such as livestock, agricultural export and irrigation. IFAD should also refine targeting strategies to sharpen the poverty focus and increase attention to youth inclusion, and articulate a coherent action plan for non-lending activities to increase IFAD’s scale of impact and influence.

Rwanda has an estimated population of 13.2 million, more than 72 per cent of which lives in rural areas. It is a low-income country. Although the level of poverty has declined over the past decade, the pace of poverty reduction has slowed; almost one in three Rwandans lives in poverty, with a higher incidence in rural areas. Rwanda faces nutrition and food security challenges, characterized by limited consumption of nutritionally diverse foods and high rates of stunting, and greater exposure to the effects of climate change.

For further information, please contact Alexander Voccia [here]

• To access the Rwanda CSPE Executive Summary, please click here.
• To access the presentation by Mr Jonckheere, please click here.
• To access the Rwanda CSPE infographic, please click here.

• To access the brochure ‘More than a journey | 20 years of independence, please click here.
• To access Fabrizio Felloni’s interview on the evolution of independence of IOE, please click here.
• To learn why independent evaluation makes IFAD a more credible institution, please click here.

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