Kigali, Rwanda: Urban Agriculture for Food Security?

This case evaluates the premade decision of the Kigali City Council (KCC) to incorporate urban agriculture into the city’s long-term development agenda, as the primary tool to address the problem of food security. A land-scarce country characterized by a predominantly rural population, Rwanda has a history of unsustainable approaches to food security, exacerbated by the collapse of the coffee industry in the 1980s and the genocide in the 1990s. After the genocide, international donors swept in to rebuild the war-torn country, which included projects designed to combat food insecurity. After seeking out the guidance of the FAO in designing a plan to increase agricultural productivity in Kigali, urban agriculture was officially incorporated into the Kigali Conceptual Master Plan (KCMP) in 2009. There are challenges to ...