Rwanda’s population is estimated to have increased by six times within the last fifty years, but the land remained the same, according to estimates from the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources.
However, information from the Ministry of Infrastructure states that a big piece of land that was meant for agriculture has been used for construction to meet the population’s housing needs.
During a roundtable discussion on de-risking agricultural value chains with digitalization, players in the agriculture sector called for leveraging technologies to increase productivity along the entire agricultural value chain, including solving the issue of low farm productivity and tackling post-harvest losses.
During the event, Egide Mutabazi, an analyst in the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources, said that there is a need to optimize the available limited land resource in order to meet the food needs of the ever-increasing population.
“Land is not growing, but the population increases every year. About 50 years ago, we were two million (Rwandan population), but now we are around 13 million. The land is not changing, but the population number is changing. That is why we have to look at how we increase the (farm) productivity,” he observed.
Source: NewTimes