Dr. Pascal Rushemuka, Rwanda Agriculture and Animal Resources Development Board, Republic of Rwanda

1. Title of the Project:
Capacity Development on sustainable Soil Management
for Africa (SSM)
Project code: GCP /RWA/040/CPR
By
Pascal Rushemuka (PhD): RAB Project Focal Point

2. Opportunities and Challenges on Soil
Fertility Management in Rwanda

3. I. Opportunities

4. Political will: Important Policy reforms for
Agriculture Productivity in Rwanda
• In 2002: Vision 2020. Long term planning policy for the country.
• In this vision, Agriculture was seen as the engine of the country economic growth
• Consequent investments
• To implement vision 2020, the Ministry of Finance elaborated a 7 years middle
term planning strategy known as ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND POVERTY
REDUCTION STRATEGY (EDPRS) (2008-2012 and 2013-2018)
• Following the above policy, the use of inputs (fertilizers, pesticides and high
yielding crop varieties) increased significantly; with them crop yields in many
parts of the country (agro-Ecological zones)
• SPAT 1&2 (Strategic Plan for Agriculture Transformation): 2018-24
• And now Vision 2050 inline with SDGs.

5. Good dataset of Rwanda Biophysical
environment
• Twelve agro-ecological zones (relief, climate, soil parent materials,
soils and agronomic suitability
• Rwanda is among few country in Sub-Saharan Africa to have a
comprehensive soil map at 1:50,000 with a soil and climatic database
with national coverage
• Rwanda soils are known and their current and potential fertility
• Existence of crop response to fertilizers and other soil fertility
management inputs (manure and lime).

6. Financing capacity and partnership
• Rwanda is Keen to finance the Agriculture Sector up to 10% of the
national budget as per the Malabo Declaration
• Rwanda Also encourages development patterners for Loans and
Grants such as World Bank, UNDP, AGRA, Bill and Melinda Gates
(BMG) foundation, IFDC and FAO through development and research
projects

7. SIMILAR Projects/Initiatives
• Currently BMG is financing 2 SIMILAR/Comlementary
projects
1. Rwanda Soil Information Systems (RWASIS)
2. Guiding Investment in acidic soils of Rwanda (GIAI)

8. Conducive Research and Extension system to
create impact
• Rwanda has a single research and extension Institution: the Rwanda
Agriculture and Extension Development Board (RAB)
• Rwanda has also a very decentralised extension network until the
village a 5 level of an administration of 5 levels.
• The extension system involves scientists (RAB), Agronomic officers
(Districts and Sectors) and farmers promoters (cells and villages)

9. Scientific capacity and Infrastructure
• Rwanda Has a good number of qualified scientists trained in Rwanda
and all over the world
• Rwanda has sufficient number of soil scientists working mainly in RAB
or teaching at the University of Rwanda
• Rwanda has a network of soil laboratory with the RAB laboratory at
Rubona chosen as Reference Laboratory in the GSP network of Soil
Laboratories

10. II. Some Constraints

11. Insufficient laboratory qualified technicians
• Lack of consistent training and supporting program for soil laboratory
technicians
• Insufficient equipment in some laboratory fields including biological
laboratory
• Insufficient capacity of maintaining (calibration) some soil laboratory
equipment
• Lack of competitive incentive for laboratory workers, yet a very
demanding task

12. A very diversified biophysical Environment
affects the adoption of fertilizer use
• Soil and soil fertility vary overshot distances but with attention, there is way of
understanding the soil spatial distribution law (catena e.g)
• Challenging soil sample and experiment results representativeness (complex
environment) for large scale extrapolation: there is need for technician to
understand and use the soil map of Rwanda.
• Less use/exploitation of soil sample results
• Use of blanket fertilizer recommendations for each crop all-over the country

13. Some constraint to the adoption of fertilizers
• A big portion of rain-fed Agriculture with high frequency of crop
failure as results of climate change and climate variability (investment
risk).
• Poor response of fertilizers in the acid soils and low organic carbon
content soils without liming and manuring (additional investment)
• Low sustainability of crop response to fertilizers without sustainable
supply of organic manure in the low clay content soils in the tropics
• Uncertain fertilizer use profitability

14. Additional constraints
• Asymmetric adoption of fertilizers in different agro-ecological zones
which need to be documented
• Persisting yield gap for many crops at national level

15. III. Contribution of the SSM
Project

16. Keys activities
• Support to equipment for efficient laboratory soil testing
• Improve soil data collection and utilization framework including soil
sampling and analysis methods, and fertilizer use and fertilizer
recommendations.
• Contribute to the framework of fertilizer quality assessment
• Conduct fertilizer use demonstrations towards efficient use of fertilizers
• Contribute to improve the national fertilizer service
• Capacity building to improve the understanding of soils and fertilizer use
efficiency
• Collaborate with the University to teach cutting-edge knowledge of soils
and soil fertility management (e.g EduSOILS).

17. Achievement so far: Laboratory Equipment tender
under process: here the list of some key
equipment
• Atomic absorption spectrophotometer (normal flame) (chemical)
• Fully automatic Kjeldahl analyzer (Chemical/Nitrogen)
• Control system for soil testing formula (fertilizer use field kit)
• AgroCares scanner (Nutrient Scanner) (Chemical field kit)
• MicroBIOMETER® 10 Test Starter Kit (Biological field kit)
• Biobase Large LCD Display Accurate and Quick Automatic Soil Nutrient
Tester (chemical field kit)
• Double Ring Infiltrometer (Physical field kit)

18. Thank you