Project area, gender situation, target group

Poverty, gender situation, and HIV/AIDS

Poverty and extreme poverty are common in the project area. The average HH size is 5 people. About 30% of the HHs are women headed. Between 6 and 10 percent of the HHs are composed of one adult over 60 years old and several orphan children. Minor heads of HHs are 1.2%. Literacy is 57% among males and 53% among females, with 67% and 60%, respectively, of the boys and girls in school age actually attending school. Between 40% and 60% of the families complement their agricultural income by selling their labor. Money revenues are reported at very low levels (maximum the equivalent of USD 130 per household per year, USD 26 per member of HH). Some reports suggests that very poor and vulnerable HHs have a family cash income of only USD 12 per member and per annum, which generally does not originate from production of cash crops.

Two crops a year are planted in the area, except of course for the perennial crops (coffee, tea, bananas, cassava, and fruit trees). About 10% of the HHs have no land. However, these include a large number of returnees who are still in the camps waiting for the District authorities to assign to them a plot of land. The majority (about 70%) of the HHs have less than 1.5 hectare of land holdings. Among these, there are many HHs with only about 0.5 ha of land. Ten to fifteen percent of the HHs have between 1.5 and 2 ha of land, are relatively well off, and have more livestock than families with less land. About 5% of the HHs have more than 2 ha, rear a few cattle and sheep, have some forestry plots, and are considered wealthy.

In all provinces, the majority of the HHs live below the threshold of poverty which is estimated at an income of USD 425 per HH: 77% in Gikongoro, 73% in Kibuye, 71% in Kigali-Ngali, 51% in Kibungo. Broadly speaking these HHs are classified in two categories: the “poor” and the “very poor”, the latter including many vulnerable HHs, who live at the bottom of the social stratification. The following table shows an estimate of the different sources of annual income of “poor” and “very poor” coffee planter HHs in the project area. The data represent an elaboration of information collected by IFAD during the formulation and appraisal missions, and of information contained in the Government poverty studies undertaken for the formulation of the PRSP. The farm models for “poor” and “very poor” HHs have been elaborated in Working Paper 4 on the basis of a modal farm holding of 1.1 ha and 0.6 ha, respectively. Poor HHs are near to food self-sufficiency, at least in terms of total calories produced in their farms, whereas very poor HHs cover only half of their requirements. They earn more cash income than poor HHs from selling their labor, and are probably forced to use all of their wage earnings to supplement their own food production.

Table 4: Sources of income (annual) and gaps to threshold of poverty.
“Poor” and “very poor” coffee planter HHs in the project area

Tea growers are generally better off. In Gikongoro, the income of a household with 0.22 ha tea plot and a total farm size of 1.1 ha is only marginally less than the threshold of poverty. At Nshili, however, a poor HH selling labor to the OCIR-Thé plantation is well below the threshold of poverty, more or less in the same position as poor coffee growers elsewhere in the province, despite the cash income from working on the plantation. People not employed at the plantation and women head of HHs who live in the district, are distinctively worse off. An approximate estimate of the situation is shown in Table 5.

Table 5: Sources of income and gaps to threshold of poverty:
Smallholder tea planter HHs in central Gikongoro, and tea plantation labor HHs in the Nshili district

IFAD interviews with the smallholders in the four provinces indicate that the causes of poverty, as perceived by the people include:

• too many people for the available land;
• insufficient labor in the family;
• no access to land in the valley bottoms;
• non availability of agricultural inputs (fertilizers and pesticides);
• poor marketing facilities for all crops (except for tea planters);
• very low and unstable prices of coffee; and
• large number of associations but little impact of their presence.

Women in the Project Area

Women head approximately 30% of all households in the project area. In order of importance, women’s main tasks are: farming (food and cash crops; livestock husbandry (especially small ruminants, pigs and chickens); domestic chores (fetching water and firewood, preparation of meals); family responsibilities (care and education of children); and off-farm tasks such as basket-making, pottery, embroidery; petty trading and hiring themselves out as paid labour, etc.. Women spend 14-17 hours of their day on these burdensome and tiring tasks, often working with the most rudimentary implements. With the limited spare time available to them, women have little rest and are thus at risk in terms of health and have little interest in further education or training or in attending meetings organized at the village level. As opposed to men, who earn more - especially from the sale of cash crops or at harvest time - women’s earnings are much more modest and spread out over the entire year. However, whereas men spend much of their earnings on consumer goods for their own use (including alcoholic beverages), the money earned by women is ploughed back into the family since it is essential to the very survival of the household. This does not, however, apply in the case of households headed by women as they take all decisions.

Activities Targeted at Women. The activities proposed under the project aim at reducing the above-mentioned inequalities between men and women. Each project component will promote actions in favour of women that deal both with their immediate needs and increase their access to information, production means, resources and financial services and their participation in community management.

Activities targeted at women will mainly involve: (i) formation of associations/cooperatives of tea or coffee producers and nursery women (production of tea or coffee plants and forest species); (ii) distribution of 965 ha of existing tea plantations and 200 ha of new tea plantations in Nshili to 4 800 poor households, of which 33% to 50% will be women heads of HH; (iii) distribution of tea and eucalyptus plants to women heads of household with a view to creating new tea plantations and woodlots in Mushubi; and (iv) for women members of the primary societies of tea and coffee growers access to microcredit.

HIV/AIDS in the Project Area. The HIV/AIDS epidemic constitutes a serious threat to the Project Area human resources and overall development in the Project Area. The nationwide 13.7% of the population over the age of 12 is affected by the epidemic. According to some reports, 23% of HH in Gikongoro and 60% of those of Kibuye are infected. GoR is planning to undertake studies to obtain the HIV/AIDS disagregated data by province. The HIV/AIDS epidemic has serious consequences for (i) the agricultural sector, by reducing the labor force available in the family and public investment due to re-channeling resources from the agricultural sector to health. In the education sector the impact of the disease is felt in less the supply of teachers as a result of illness and death, and absenteeism due to caring for sick family members.