Govt, Development Partners promise support to Farmer Promoters Fund

Discussions are at the last stage to set up Farmer Promoters Incentives Fund as way of recognizing farmer promoters’ role in the development of Rwanda’s Agriculture sector.

On Thursday 18^th October 2018, the Rwanda Ministry of Agriculture and USAID Hinga Weze project co-organized a workshop during which Agro-dealers, Farmer promoters and development partners exchanged ideas on the design and operating Mechanisms of the Famer Promoters’ Incentives Fund.

At the workshop, the Farmer promoters welcomed the funding mechanisms and called for the swift set up of the fund which they say is a clear sign that the work of Farmer promoters is being recognized.

The Farmer promoters Development/Incentives Fund proposal came in after realizing that there were some incentives that should be given to farmer promoters which are not reaching them as it was planned in the agreements between the agro-distributor and Agro-dealers who should give 2 Rwf/Kg of fertilizers to Farmer promoters around the country.

However, since the agreement was reached, the Rwanda Ministry of Agriculture, Rwanda Agriculture Board and Agro Processing Trust Corporation (APTC), a sole contracted Moroccan agro distributor company decided to mobilize agro dealers to provide Rwf 2/Kg incentives to farmer promoters in their capacity as frontline extension agents.

On Thursday, October 18, 2018, Dr. Bucagu Charles, Deputy Director General in charge of agriculture research and technology transfer at Rwanda Agriculture Board revealed that since then the money has been deducted from Agro-dealers on every Kilogram of fertilizers waiting clear procedures to be followed in order to benefit the owners.

Dr. Bucagu said the money will be kept on APTC account until Farmer Promoters Incentives Fund is set up.

Bucagu who was speaking to media on Thursday after addressing the workshop announced that the fund will be set up within three or four coming months.

According to officials in July, Hinga Weze had a working session with APTC (the GoR-appointed distributor for subsidized agro-inputs.)

During the meeting it was suggested to organize a meeting between APTC and 30 districts Agro-dealers cooperatives ‘representatives as well as farmer promoters to clearly agree on how to manage the Rwf 2/Kg incentive to farmer promoters, revive agro-dealers’ cooperatives and strengthen and harmonize the collaboration between MINAGRI, RAB, Agro-dealers, Farmer promoters  and Hinga Weze.

Officials said “It is against this background that Hinga Weze in close collaboration with MINAGRI, RAB, APTC, District agro-dealers cooperatives and Farmer promoters sat together to agree on the way forwards.”

Statistics show that currently there are about 820 Agro-dealers under Nkunganire Muhinzi program while Farmer Promoters number stood at 14,099.

To understand how much farmer promoters would gain in total, calculations showed that during Agricultural Season A 2018 and Season B 2018, the fertilizer consumption was 45, 050, 975 Kg.

Based on the numbers, the projections for farmer promoters Incentives per year in total would be Rwf 90, 101, 950.

It was noticed if you take the total incentives and divide with the total number of Farmer Promoters, each one could receive around Rwf 6 390 per year.

Dr, Bucagu said “It is in this regards that we thought about setting up the fund where incentives will be channeled and then people can start thinking about using that money in a collective project that would benefit them as a group.”

He refered to Umwalimu Sacco, a Credit and Saving Cooperative for Teachers, as an example of what could be done with such amount.

He said that once farmer promoters’ incentive fund is set up, the Government and Development partners are ready to support them via the fund.

Maj. Canisius Kayitera, the Business Development Director at APTC said that there are so many development partners who are ready to support this initiative.

“APTC want agro-dealers to develop as well as farmer promoters,” Maj. Kayitera said.

The USAID Hinga Weze Chief of Party Daniel Gies said that Hinga Weze is supporting Agro dealers and Farmer promoters and farmers for better access to agricultural inputs.

The USAID Hinga Weze signed an MoU with APTC so that they can enable RAB and MINAGRI to support farmers and Agro-dealers in the distribution of fertilizers.

“We have been doing a lot of work with farmer promoters through RAB and MINIAGRI and we had many of trainings, capacity building…we do a lot of work in terracing, in irrigation and all of this is through farmer promoters.” He said

For the Farmer Promoters Incentive Fund, Daniel said through Hinga Weze they are supporting their ideas of RAB and APTC, of agro-dealers and farmer promoters themselves to organize their incentives through this fund.

“We hope there would be other mechanisms to collect other resources to mobilize farmer promoters so they have bigger impacts on the many millions of farmers in Rwanda.” Daniel added