A $20 million centre being set up in Rwanda’s Huye District, Southern Province, is set to be a regional and even continental leader in genetic improvement for cattle production, according to implementers of a project under which it is being established.

The Songa Centre of Dairy and Genetic Excellence is part of a broader Rwanda Dairy Development Project - Phase 2 (RDDP 2), whose main funder is the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). It is implemented by the government of Rwanda, IFAD and other partners.

RDDP 2 is funded at a tune of $128 million, according to Dagmawi Habte-Selassie, IFAD Country Director and Representative Country for Rwanda and Burundi.

The Rwanda Agriculture and Animal Resources Development Board (RAB), and livestock sector actors describe it as the largest dairy single project Rwanda has ever had.

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Habte-Selassie said the first phase of the centre is complete, adding "we're investing $9 million in the second phase.”

According to Solange Uwituze, Deputy Director General in charge of Animal Resources Development at RAB, the investment in the first phase was $11 million.

The two experts were speaking to The New Times on Thursday, May 29, on the sidelines of the International Dairy Federation (IDF) Regional Dairy Conference Africa 2025, held under the theme Sustainable Dairy for Prosperous Africa. It runs through June 1.

Habte-Selassie said that genetic improvement intervention is in line with ensuring that cows are the best gene that can produce the most milk and generate the most returns for smallholder farmers.

"So, we're building Songa, the National Artificial Insemination Center, which is going to be state-of-the-art in the whole region. In the next year or so, Rwanda will be a leader in genetics for dairy and other animals,” he said, adding that the centre will have the best productive bulls from which semen will be collected for treatment and delivery to dairy farmers.

"We're going to have sex semen technology. So, you'll be able to say I want a female cow, a cow or a bull. You can actually choose what you want,” he said.

Elaborating on features that are going to make that centre stand out on the continent, he said "this is a technology that's not much in the continent. For example, sex semen is very expensive technology and there's not many facilities on the continent.”

Apart from production to meeting local farmers’ demand, he said that there is a target to export.

"The idea at the end is, with Songa, with the facility, we'll be able to export genetics. People in the region don't have to go to Europe, they don't have to go to bring semen or things like that. We'll have the technology within Rwanda to be able to do so,” he said.

Genetic improvement will be complemented by other interventions such as helping cattle farmers access feed, availability of water for cow consumption, and good farming practices in support of the entire animal husbandry, according to Habte-Selassie.

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Addressing Rwanda’s reliance on sexed semen, embryo imports

Uwituze said that the centre will not only be a leader in artificial insemination, but in the entire cattle genetic improvement, indicating that it will be having four major technologies.

"We will be having artificial insemination, sexing technology, what we call multiple ovulation transfer, embryo transfer, and then we shall be having the embryos,” she said.

With the centre, she said, the country will be positioned to have improved dairy cows genetically, "because we shall be having both semen and embryos for beef and dairy.”

As a result of producing sexed cattle semen and embryos domestically, she said that the centre impact will also include a contribution to reducing the country’s import bill given that it was currently solely relying on imports of such products from countries including The Netherlands and France.

Currently, she said, Rwanda is able to only produce ordinary semen – that which can help produce either a heifer calf or bull calf, unlike sexed semen which can be inseminated into a cow with precision to produce a calf of choice, say a female calf.

By producing sexed semen technology in the country, Uwituze said the cost of that technology "will be much, much cheaper because the logistics around the importation will be abolished.”

Though the entire bill was not readily available, she said that one sexed semen costs $47 (approx. Rwf66,000), just per unit, adding that for an embryo, the cost may be three times that amount.