Intensification of smallholder agriculture in Rwanda: scenarios and challenges towards a sustainable transformation

This paper clarifies the path that Rwanda took in the quest for a modern, intensive, productive and market-oriented agriculture. The facts presented here have been collected by means of documentation that led to the review of different publications including published papers and government and development partners’ reports. The paper shows that an adequate policy and institutional environment has been created by various socio-economic, institutional and agriculture-led reforms launched since the early 2000s. The literature review reveals that impressive results have been recorded in regard to smallholder agriculture intensification. In addition, the theoretical model for progressive smallholder agriculture transformation helped to show that most of the smallholders grouped in cooperatives are at the 'semi-commercial smallholders' stage while only a few are at the 'commercial smallholders' and 'advanced farmers' stages. This study also examines various challenges that hamper the sustainable intensification of smallholder agriculture at both institutional, community and smallholder level. It suggests some policy actions to be put forward by the government and other agriculture sector development partners to address those challenges.