The Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources (MINAGRI) is crafting the fourth Strategic Plan for the Transformation of Agriculture (PSTA IV). The new plan will serve as the nation’s primary blueprint for guiding public investment in Rwanda’s agriculture sector.
Representatives of local agri-businesses and farmers from around the country are being consulted to capture their successes, lessons and challenges from the past five years. Recommendations will be considered for the new strategic plan.
Key priority areas for consideration by the government are being discussed as well. This Friday June 2, 2017, stakeholders met and discussed the details of the plan. One of the major elements was focus on ‘attracting and expanding private sector investment in the agriculture sector.’
The government is convinced this is one of the ways of achieving an annual growth rate of at least 8.5% in the agricultural sector. The aides gathered from the workshop will be consolidated with other feedback gathered from non-government organizations, civil society organizations, development partners, and international experts.
PSTA IV will be finalized by December 2017, and will take effect in June 2018. “The Private Sector Federation always supports all policies that aim at improving the business environment in the country, This is therefore an opportunity for farmers to influence business reforms through this dialogue,” says Donatien MUNGWARAREBA, Ag. Chief Advocacy Officer in PSF.
The workshop was held in partnership with the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Private Sector Driven Agriculture Growth project; as well as the Private Sector Federation/Rwanda Chamber of Agriculture and Livestock (PSF/RCAL) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization FAO through Rwanda Public Private Dialogue (RPPD) mechanism.
“The success of this strategy will count more on its inclusiveness. We want all the sector’s stakeholders to contribute to its elaboration, and further more be involved in its implementation with full knowledge of all its components,” Said Kayisinga Jean Claude the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources.
Pierre Munyura, a farmer, says that, “effective planning that has been demonstrated during PSTAIV formulation will result in strengthen the forums across the country and the issues that affect them he hopes going to be captured in the PSTAIV document.”
