Agricultural value chain prioritization: Findings from an economywide modeling exercise for Rwanda

Agricultural value chain prioritization:

Findings from an economywide modeling exercise for Rwanda

Date: June 14, 2022

Venue: Ubumwe Grande Hotel

Time: 12:00 pm to 1:15 pm

As Rwanda pursues its ambitious national transformation process, it is important to fully understand agriculture’s impact on the entire economy and to prioritize its investments in a data-driven and evidence-based manner. This seminar examined results from a forward-looking application of Rwanda’s most up-to-date economywide model to identify the impact of value chain development across four dimensions: generating economic and sectoral growth; reducing national and rural poverty; generating jobs and employment (both on-farm and in the broader agri-food system); and improving diet quality.

Findings indicate the following, highlighting both the potential of specific value chains and the tradeoffs across multiple development outcomes.

• Investing in fruit value chains has the highest impact on increasing agri-food system GDP and improving household diet quality, although its impact on job creation is relatively limited.
• Vegetable value chain investments are more poverty-reducing than other value chain investments, although they contribute less to agri-food system GDP or employment growth.
• Value chains for beverage crops have the highest impact on agri-food system employment, followed by oilseed value chains.
• When all four development outcomes are weighted equally, fruits, vegetables, and oilseeds have the highest composite scores, despite their relatively low agricultural GDP shares.

The results suggest that no one value chain will achieve substantial gains for all four development outcomes, thus requiring a mix of agricultural value chain investments to make substantive progress in Rwanda’s agricultural transformation. However, the choice of value chains to include or prioritize within the portfolio depends on the importance attached to each outcome.

Schedule of Event:

Opening Remarks - Anna Twum, Country Economist, IGC

Presentation of Key Findings - James Thurlow, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI

Discussant - Chantal Ingabire, Director General of Planning, MINAGRI

Moderator - David Spielman, Senior Research Fellow and Program Leader of Rwanda SSP, IFPRI