Rwanda Strengthens Sweet Potato Industry with New Roadmap for Growth and Market Expansion

In a significant move towards enhancing Rwanda’s sweet potato farming, the Rwanda Agriculture and Animal Resources Development Board (RAB), in collaboration with the International Potato Center (CIP), on November 28, 2024, organized a Sweet Potato Stakeholders’ Workshop. The event focused on validating the Sweet Potato Roadmap, a strategic initiative aimed at enhancing the sweet potato value chain in Rwanda. Recognizing the crop’s immense potential, the workshop brought together key stakeholders to discuss critical interventions, business opportunities, and ways to strengthen market and trade linkages, ensuring that Rwanda’s sweet potato sector can thrive in both local and international markets.

The objectives of the workshop were multi-faceted, focusing on addressing bottlenecks within the sweet potato value chain, mapping key actors and activities across districts, and exploring opportunities for value addition through improved agricultural practices and post-harvest handling. The session also provided a platform for validating the roadmap document, which outlines necessary process improvements and sets clear business recommendations. Furthermore, the workshop aimed to align these initiatives with Rwanda’s broader agricultural development strategy under the PSTA-V framework, ensuring sustainable growth and long-term success for the sweet potato industry in the country.

Dr. Jean NDIRIGWE, Head of the Sweet Potato Program at Rwanda Agriculture and Animal Resources Development Board (RAB), is advancing efforts to breed high-yielding sweet potato varieties with enhanced nutritional benefits. Based at the Rubona Research Station, the program develops varieties rich in vitamin A (orange-flesh) and anthocyanins (purple-flesh) while continuing work with traditional white-flesh types.

He highlighted that orange-flesh sweet potatoes (OFSP) are critical for combating malnutrition in children under five, especially in Rwanda’s high-risk districts. These varieties, rich in beta-carotene, are a cost-effective alternative to expensive vitamin A capsules distributed by the government. OFSP also provides additional nutrients like vitamin K, vitamin E, and iron, essential for community health.

“I’m a plant breeder, and then I work on sweet potatoes mainly, where I’m researching breeding aspects. We intend to breed for high yielding, and then for nutrition aspect where we are trying to develop some varieties rich in vitamin A, and then the purple variety also, it’s a new component where we are trying to release some new varieties on purple flesh sweet potato,” he said.

The program collaborates with other research stations and aligns with TAAT (Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation) initiatives to scale up production. Beyond addressing nutrition, the program prioritizes market integration by partnering with processors to produce value-added products like bread, cakes, biscuits, and porridge using sweet potato puree. This approach boosts household income while making nutritious food more accessible.

“We are trying to set up a roadmap for sweet potatoes. So the roadmap is very important in a way we are trying to reach our destination. So our destination is to come up with new varieties with higher nutrition content as beta-carotene, but also we’ll add the anthocyanin aspect, but the TAAT is focusing on vitamin A only. The vitamin A goes together with the orange; the more the orange, the more the vitamin A content,” Dr. Ndirigwe revealed.

The program also aims for variety in products to meet diverse consumer preferences, balancing nutritional content and market demands. Purple-flesh sweet potatoes, for instance, are gaining interest for their health benefits, particularly anthocyanins. By offering multiple sweet potato types, the initiative ensures improved health, enhanced food security, and economic opportunities for Rwandan communities.

Dr. Ndirigwe added, “Our aim is to produce high-yielding varieties of sweet potato, including white and orange flesh. We aim to balance the quantity of beta-carotene and vitamin A content, as some people prefer white flesh sweet potatoes. We have identified markets in Rwanda for white, orange, and purple sweet potato varieties, ensuring a diverse product range for the market.”

Jean-Claude NSHIMIYIMANA, an associate scientist at the International Potato Center (CIP) in Rwanda, stated that CIP will primarily focus on Irish potato and sweet potato crops in Rwanda, collaborating with local organizations and the National Research Institute, RAB, to introduce sweet potato varieties and intervene in the seed system from seed multiplication.

He said, “We also do dissemination of seed. We talk about the whole value chain, including processing. So our role at CIP today is that we have been working with RAB to develop that document of the sweet potato roadmap, which needs to guide interventions, strategies, and activities that need to be done in Sweet Potato, but also a link up with all the stakeholders in the value chain.”

He revealed that for sweet potato is the first time such a roadmap has been developed, this is due to a missing document. This information will be available to the government, policymakers, and other stakeholders in the evaluation.

Laban Ahija, Value Chain Technology Transfer Officer, at Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT), expressed excitement about the progress made in the validation of the seed roadmap. As TAAT is supporting various countries in implementing the Orange Fleshed Sweet Potato Project (OFSP), he expressed enthusiasm for the collaboration with various partners in these countries including Rwanda.

He said, “For instance, here in Rwanda, we are working with RAB, and of course, other countries are working on various narratives in the implementation of the OSFP; I can say it’s a very low-input product. But it has many benefits, one of which is that it’s rich in beta-carotene, which is a precursor for vitamin A. Vitamin A is very, very key when it comes to immunity, especially for breastfeeding mothers and children under five; it boosts immunity and brain development.”

He emphasized the importance of raising awareness about the low input and convenience of the orange sweet potato, a low-cost staple food, as it is particularly beneficial for resource-poor farmers. TAAT aimed to promote the uptake and scaling of the production of this sweet potato, as farmers have been prioritizing staple foods like maize and sorghum.

Allen Umulisa, CEO and Founder of Expanders Limited, as well as a farmer, highlighted the strides made in Rwandan agriculture, particularly in the potato value chain. Her company engages in farming and exportation of crops like French beans, chilies, avocados, passion fruits, and sweet potatoes, working closely with farmers across Rwanda’s provinces.

She expressed optimism about the progress in sweet potato farming, noting improved quantity and quality since a validation workshop she attended in December 2023. However, challenges persist, including limited access to quality seeds. Collaboration with organizations like RAB has introduced new sweet potato varieties, aligning with growing market demand, especially for flesh orange sweet potatoes.

“This validation workshop has been a great workshop for us, where we are learning and having a lot of information because we are learning and farmers are learning a lot on this, which means we are going to improve ourselves as farmers and exporters, as well as farmers that we are working with, and we hope that there is an improvement, because since last year there was a little bit of quantity, but it has increased,” she stated.

Looking ahead, Umulisa emphasized the need to expand land and production to meet market demands. She also advocated for heightened farmer sensitization, ensuring more farmers engage in flesh orange sweet potato cultivation, ultimately boosting exports and improving livelihoods across Rwanda.

She said, “Flesh orange sweet potatoes are being loved and liked on the market, so that is showing us that we need to grow them, and we need to increase the land, as well as the quantity we are growing, so that we can satisfy the market.”