USAID’s PSDAG celebrates Farmers ICTs Usage Achievements
Officials from the Private Sector Driven Agriculture Growth (PSDAG) project, the representatives of the Rwandan Ministry of Agriculture and the NGOs whose services touch the lives of the farmers have revealed that they are satisfied with the achievements made through PSDAG project which is financed by the American Agency of the International Development (USAID) to improve the socio-economic lives of small farmers in Rwanda.
Officials spoke on the PSDAG Achievements on Tuesday 27th November 2018 during Cooperatives Professionalization Program Learning Event which brought together about 60 farmers’ cooperatives leaders from around the country, Government and NGOs representatives as well as representatives from the USAID Rwanda.
PSDAG have organized the event in order to exchange professional information with farmers’ cooperatives on how they can improve and sustain business capacity of cooperatives in Rwanda.
The event followed a successful completion of a one year Cooperatives Professionalization training Program provided by PSDAG.
Officials said that there were many challenges which pushed USAID through PSDAG to support farmers around the country as their working system was very archaic and that led to poor income comparing with the energy farmers were investing in their agricultural Activities.
Speaking at the event, Theoneste Hitimana, the PSDAG Cooperative professionalization facilitator said that “Before the launch of the program, buyers complained about supply chain, there was mistrust of buyers, lack of quality and quantity for commercial contracts and lack of formalized business-oriented suppliers to work with.”
He added that “Apart from those challenges there were also lack of access to market, to capital investments and poor Governance, perception of corruption and mismanagement of cooperatives.”
It is in this regards that PSDAG hunted ways of professionalizing Cooperatives in order to improve and sustain they business capacity.
According to officials, after assessments of farmer cooperatives around the country, it was noticed that farmers are losing a lot despite the tireless efforts invested in their activities.
“We have then published an announcement to cooperatives so they could apply for PSDAG training support,” Said Barbara Mbabazi, a Senior Value Chain Specialist at PSDAG.
After the announcement 60 Cooperatives were selected while the total number of the applications was 70 cooperatives that requested professionalization training.
“After the submission of Applications PSDAG visited them to identify those who met the Criteria and that how we came up with these 60 cooperatives.” Mbabazi explained.
Use of ICTs as a solution to cooperatives challenges
The training covered cooperative management skills and ICTs usage in the daily functioning of the cooperatives.
Officials said 600 farmers were trained 10 from each cooperative and those trained will also continue to training their colleagues in their respective cooperatives.
Through ICT training as part of coop professionalization, all 60 cooperatives received a tabled in which there is software that helps cooperative management to also use digitized system in their routine activities.
“11 cooperatives are set to be fully equipped with digital systems,” officials added.
Speaking to TOPAFRICANEWS, Melanie Bittle the PSDAG Chief of Party commended the move as a promising step towards the professionalization of farmers’ cooperatives in Rwanda.
She said that after the professionalization program a number of cooperatives managed to access financial loans from bank while others successfully registered with the Rwanda Cooperatives Association (RCA).
“I am really very happy with the success of the Use of ICTs by farmers. This concept was really to see if farmers are able to use ICTs, we are talking about using tablet systems, go to the internet and downloading information, using computer programs …we used very simple techniques to do this and we found that it’s very possible, I think this a great achievement that we can celebrate today,” Melanie said.
However farmers raised the issue of sustainability of these technologies as the PSDAG project is nearing its end.
The Chairman of the National Cooperatives Confederation of Rwanda (NCCR), Augustin Katabarwa said “The issue of sustainability is not a problem as the Government has put in place institutions in charge of dealing with all information technology related issues.”
Katabarwa said “Cooperatives should not always wait for donor assistance. You have been equipped with skills that are contributing to the financial stability of your cooperatives and from that you can also use a portion of your income to replace some the ICT facilities that have damaged for example…”
In the meantime farmers promised that they will never stop using ICTs in their activities because of their reliability and how they quicken services.
They said ICTs have improved their working environment in their respective cooperatives.
Currently some of the cooperatives are able to sell the produce in other countries, thanks to the use of the Internet that connects them to the international potential buyers
