On Friday, Japan and Rwanda signed a loan agreement worth 10 billion yen (around 91 million dollars) that will enable Rwandans to strategize on planting nutritious foods and making them available to ordinary citizens.
Budgetary support funds will be injected into funding existing government efforts to address current alarming national figures of malnutrition-related stunting.
Since 2012, Rwanda has seen a decline in stunting among children aged between 6 months and 5 years from 42 percent to 35 percent in 2018 – representing only a 7 percent reduction in six years, far short of Rwanda’s target of reducing stunting below 19 percent by 2024.
The funding agreement was signed between Japan’s Ambassador to Rwanda, Amb. Takayuki Miyashita, Minister of Finance for Rwanda, Dr Uzziel Ndagijimana, and Shin Maruo, Chief Representative of the Rwanda office of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
The three-year program will be implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources, the National Early Childhood Development Program (NECDP), the Rwanda Agriculture and Animal Resources Development Board (RAB) and the Rwanda Biomedical Center (RBC).
“This will help these institutions to set up nutrition-sensitive agriculture guidelines, strengthen the availability of protein-rich food through the small livestock distribution program, but this has to be planned and budgeted for in each,” explained Jean Claude Musabyimana, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture.
Musabyimana also stated that the funding program will focus mainly on two components of food security and multi-sectoral coordination that the government will have to decide on which existing projects to be boosted with funding.
Among the existing nutrition programs in Rwanda are the one-cow per family program (Girinka), the Gabiro milk production plant, school and early childhood feeding projects, distribution of fortified foods for mothers and children in health centers and distribution of fortified iron and vitamin-rich seeds, among others.
Minister Dr. Ndagijimana said this funding has a timeline that will boost nutrition through agricultural transformation, but also enable Rwanda to do more research to improve the production of nutritious foods, conduct community education, and engage a variety of institutions.
“ This is Japan’s first Sector Policy Loan (SPL) to the Government of Rwanda and the country has up to 40 years to repay the loan at an interest rate of 0.01% with a grace period of ten years. I am sure that we will make good use of this funding,” Ndagijimana said.
Amb Miyashita, however, was positive about Rwanda’s track record of accountability and implementation of the previous two Yen loan agreements, but stated that the choice to go to social support was to address the real challenges facing the community.
“We (Japan) rely on your (Rwanda) governance, budget discipline and policymaking and implementation. We are sure you will efficiently make good use of this money, that we agreed to support in this new way of improving nutrition for children which is important to development,” Miyashita.
JICA Rwanda Boss, Shin Maruo observed that preparing the 27 policy activities in the contract by implementing authorities is essential and that the achievement of the Rwandan model can be an illustration for other nations at the upcoming Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) on 28 – 30 August 2019.