More than 300 households in Gicumbi District will have permanent market for their milk after the construction of a modern milk collection centre in the district.

Construction of the plant, valued at Rwf30 million, is set to start next week in Nyankenke sector as part of the efforts by World Vision to empower the local community.

George Gitau, the director of World Vision, said the fully equipped modern milk processing plant will be in position to buy all the surplus milk from farmers and ensuring that it is fresh and disease-free before putting it on the market.

"Cooperatives will be trained to run the plant and to use the available modern machines to add value to milk and manufacture products such as gee and yoghurt for sale,” Gitau said.

A similar collection centre was constructed in Nyamagabe to assist farmers with processing surplus milk.

Gitau added that such empowerment models encourage development of skills of household members for self-sufficiency.

Alphonse Ndungutse, the president of Zirakamwa, a cooperative of 108 members that will run the centre after its completion, applauded its members for providing land over which the plant is to be constructed.

"Although people who received cows from the One Cow per Family programme (Girinka) had started realising benefits, they were still faced with a problem of handling their milk and lacked enough market to sell surplus,” Ndungutse said.

Ndungutse is optimistic that since they struggled for a long time because of lack of modern machines to test the milk for quality and help prevent it from going bad before reaching the market, the plant will minimise these kinds of losses that farmers have been incurring.

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