Rwanda Livestock Competitiveness Review

The CIRAD/WB/FAO/ILRI “ALIVE” model with the Livestock Sector Investment and Policy Toolkit (LSIPT) and the Livestock Master Plan tools were used to develop the Rwanda Livestock Master Plan. In this methodology specific attention is paid to both the small-scale and large scale, formal and informal production sectors and methods. The value of the outcomes of models always depend upon what is put in. A common saying is “rubbish in rubbish out”. Rwanda has due to its compactness and high population and animal density an above average quality dataset on crop and livestock production. Its government’s insistence on verifiable progress indicators has given rise to a good database of crop and livestock production. The proposed pathway and investment levels need independent verification and for that reason the International Finance Corporation wants a study to assess the profitability of the proposed long-term investments in the livestock sector.

Rwanda’s livestock sector is heavily influenced by what is happening in its neighbouring countries. Rwanda is heavily maize-deficient for both its human and animal populations’ requirements and depends upon Tanzania, DRC and Uganda to fill the short-coming. This means that any political upheaval in any of these countries has a direct effect on the Rwanda especially poultry and pork sector. Rwanda has too little capacity to produce its own DOCs for broilers and layers and imports a lot of chicks from Uganda and Europe. The flying ban in this Corona era is another example how the sector is sensitive to external shocks. Imports are expensive for a land-locked country and thus strategic reserves of fertilizer; animal feed components etc. are required, besides making attempts to decrease the dependency on imports.