The Ministry of Trade and Industry has said that locally grown short grain rice known as "Kigori” is struggling to get a market after processing factories and consumers complain of its poor quality.
According to Rwanda Agriculture Board (RAB), there are different rice types on 12,400 ha of all marshlands in Rwanda with an average productivity of 5.8 tonnes per hectare.
Rice produce increased to 113,880 tonnes in 2018 from 83,338 tonnes in 2017.
However, farmers mostly grow the Kigori short rice type which is of poor quality despite providing high yields per hectare.
Dative Mukaniyonzima, the Commodity Value Chain Trade Specialist at the Ministry of Trade and Industry told Sunday Times that such rice variety does not compete well with the imported long grain rice.
"Up today, 60 per cent of rice grown in Rwanda is Kigori which is short grain rice but consumers do not like it due to its poor quality and therefore it fails to compete with imported rice from Pakistan, Tanzania and India,” she explained
The issue, she said, has triggered over 5,000 tonnes of "Kigori to stall in stores last season since local processing factories rejected it.
There are 24 rice processing factories of which the government invested inthree of them in Bugesera, Kirehe and Gatsibo districts.
"Through various studies, we are draining different marshlands where other varieties of long grain are multiplied so as to be given to farmers in order to supply required quality that can compete with imported rice as local processing factories demand,” she said.
She added: "With long grain rice, the price is a bit high compared to the one imported but almost the same quality. If Pakistan rice is costs Rwf18,000 per sack, locally produced long rice goes for Rwf20,000 and its quality is similar to that of the imported rice,” she said.
"Antoine Ntirushywa, the president of the union with 16 cooperatives composed of 6,754 farmers in Huye district said they grow rice on 684 hectares but still face some challenges.
"We can harvest 4.9 tonnes for every one hectare but most of it is short grain rice. We still lack types of rice that are attractive to consumers. We sign contracts with processing factories to receive our rice produce but last season the factories rejected our produce which stalled in our stores while others delayed to pay farmers,” he said.
In order to mitigate that problem, a programme dubbed "Strengthening African Rural Small holder farmers (STAR)” was launched recently to help rice farmers cope with problems in the value chain under the support of ICCO cooperation, a global development organisation.
The project operates in Rwanda, Senegal, Ethiopia and Burkina Faso whereby over 210,000 small holder farmers are supported to access the market by also addressing the issue of poor rice variety.
Patrick Birasa, the head of the programme in Rwanda said the project will benefit 44,000 smallholder farmers in Rwanda over five years.
He said that there are high yields of rice but poor quality impeded access to market.
"We are supporting farmers in the value chain business so that farmers access markets. We are partnering to seek solution with issues of seed varieties that are not attractive to the market,” he said.
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