Kirehe Community-based Watershed Management Project)

This IFAD grant will be a major source of financing for this project, which supports the government’s strategy to promote the shift from subsistence to market-based agriculture. The project’s objective is to develop sustainable and profitable small-scale commercial agriculture in the Kirehe district, a densely populated area that is threatened by severe soil erosion. The district has a potential for agricultural intensification within an environmentally sustainable integrated production system.

The target population includes small-scale farmers and landless households and, within those groups, households headed by women and households affected by HIV/AIDS. The project area includes 15 watersheds in the Kirehe district. In this and other districts the ongoing IFAD-funded Support Project for the Strategic Plan for the Transformation of Agriculture (PAPSTA) has helped lay the groundwork for implementation of the government’s agricultural sector programme and for agricultural intensification, a key priority of the programme.

The project will work in partnership with the World Food Programme (WFP) through food-for-work environmental protection activities successfully piloted under PAPSTA. It will also draw on specialized technical assistance from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The aim is to boost the capacities of communities and authorities at district and national level.

The project will focus on the development of:

• local institutions to increase their capacity to support the sustained increase of profitable small-scale agriculture, and to ensure effective water and land use management
• agricultural intensification through market-led investments in value chain development, crop and livestock intensification, improved irrigation and soil and water conservation
• feeder roads to improve links between farmers and markets

A key feature of the project is the fusion of commercialized and intensified agriculture with an approach based on sound and sustainable resource management. Operations include an integrated management approach that assigns responsibility for planning and financial management to the district and the communities within it. The project also introduces hillside irrigation and household biogas technology.

Technical assistance under the project will provide support to:

• watershed management planning
• waters users’ associations
• land tenure security activities
• value chain development
• soil and water conservation
• engineering for irrigation and road works

In many cases the project will scale up approaches tested elsewhere. And because it will support a wide range of individual initiatives, it has a broad potential for replication elsewhere in Rwanda.

IFAD will directly supervise the project, working together with the government and its partners. Activities will be coordinated by the existing unit that manages PAPSTA.

Source: IFAD

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In this section Project overview Documents Contact information Mr Claus Reiner Country programme manager IFAD Via Paolo di Dono, 44 00142 Rome, Italy Tel: +39 0654592797 Fax: +39 0654593797 c.reiner@ifad.org   Facts and figures Total cost: US$49.3 million IFAD DSF grant: US$26.7 million Cofinancing: World Food Programme (WFP) (US$13.0 million) German Development Service (DED) (US$510,000) Duration: 7 years Geographical area: Kirehe district in eastern Rwanda Directly benefiting: 48,000 households Status: not yet effective