Rene Anthere Rwanyange
The morning mist had barely lifted over the Muyanza Irrigation Scheme in Rulindo District when farmers began to arrive — not with hoes and seeds, but with notebooks, questions, and stories. They had come for something that is quietly changing agriculture in Rwanda: a Farmer-to-Farmer Knowledge Sharing Session.
Organised under the Sustainable Agricultural Intensification and Food Security Project, known as SAIP II, and implemented through the Rwanda Agriculture and Animal Resources Development Board (RAB) under the Single Project Implementation Unit (SPIU), the sessions are built on a simple idea. The best teacher for a farmer is often another farmer.
That morning, cooperatives from different areas gathered to show each other what works, what failed, and what could be copied. They talked about yields, markets, greenhouses, irrigation, and how to turn a cooperative from a meeting group into a real business.
For Domitille Mukandori, a member of DUKUNDUMURIMO Cooperative, the day was an eye-opener. “Today, we heard how other cooperatives have been operating, and there is a lot we can learn from them to help us progress,” she said.
Mukandoli knows what progress looks like. Her cooperative has moved from subsistence farming to more organised, market-oriented production, and much of that change came from support that reached women first.
She credited SAIP II with helping women in her cooperative venture into greenhouse farming, an investment she said had opened up opportunities for better harvests, income generation and improved family welfare.
“What we appreciate most is that SAIP supported us. As women, we formed a group, and the project provided us with a greenhouse that helped us engage in farming. Once we harvest our produce, we export some of it and earn money that supports our families,” she said.
In Muyanza, that is not just a story about vegetables. It is a story about power shifting inside the household. Mukandoli explained that the income generated through greenhouse farming had also strengthened women’s participation in household decision-making, with their husbands increasingly supporting their agricultural activities because of the benefits they bring to the family.
“Today, our husbands give us the opportunity to work in the greenhouses because, when we earn money, our children can go to school, we can pay for community-based health insurance, and we can address different challenges in our households,” Mukandori added.
Around her, other farmers nodded. They knew the same equation: better knowledge leads to better yields, better yields lead to better income, and better income leads to school fees, health insurance, and dignity.
The Farmer-to-Farmer sessions are designed to make that equation spread faster. Instead of waiting for an extension officer to visit each hill, farmers learn directly from cooperatives that have already solved the problem — how to manage water at the Muyanza scheme, how to keep records, how to negotiate with buyers, how to maintain a greenhouse, how to grade produce for export.
SAIP II’s goal is to boost agricultural productivity, expand markets and improve household incomes by learning from successful cooperatives. The sessions at Muyanza are the practical expression of that goal: peer learning turned into higher yields and stronger cooperative businesses.
The timing matters. In Rulindo, farmers organised under cooperatives have already shown what is possible when knowledge meets infrastructure. At Nyarububa Marshland, for example, maize yields have risen from 2 tonnes per hectare to 6 tonnes, with farmers now targeting 8 tonnes per hectare. The district is targeting an increase in agricultural production, with maize yields expected to rise from 6.5 tonnes to eight tonnes.
But yields do not rise by seeds alone. They rise when farmers share what they know — when a woman who has mastered greenhouse farming shows another woman how to do it, when a cooperative that has found a buyer shares the contact, when a farmer who has learned to manage water teaches his neighbour to do the same.
As the session ended at Muyanza, farmers did not leave with handouts. They left with ideas they could test the next morning in their own fields. And that is the quiet revolution in Rulindo: farmers are no longer just growing crops. They are growing each other.