Eighty-four-year-old Mukarusini Purisikira had been a farmer before she fled the country to Congo during the 1994 Rwandan genocide against the Tutsis. Upon returning, she said, her family's land, which had stretched across the hills, had been taken away for construction. She gestured toward Kigali's high-rise buildings. Now she grows maize and sweet potatoes on a piece of land the size of a small cottage, which she said is barely enough to feed her.
Other approaches in Kigali include vertical farms, where vegetables and fruits such as strawberries are grown in stackable plastic containers.
Christian Irakoze co-founded a local company, Eza Neza or "grow well," that sets up vertical farms in the city and described them as scalable. The AP visited two of them at local homes and another that provides stocks to a grocery store. One grows 600 plants in vertical rows stretching about 50 meters (yards) along a perimeter wall.
Irakoze described his work as "a different way of thinking about farming, from traditional large-scale upcountry farming to something smaller, modular, and that anyone can really do."
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