Diagnosing constraints in Rwanda's agricultural market

As the Government of Rwanda continues to deliver policies for post-COVID recovery, analytics that diagnose constraints in key sectors and inform progress of programmes have the potential to enhance the effectiveness of the overall strategy in policy response.

The World Bank’s Development Impact Evaluation (DIME) team aims to support this response through remote data collection designed in close partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources (MINAGRI) and the Rwanda Agriculture Board (RAB). By identifying households and regions in the country that need the largest degree of policy support, targeted transfers can achieve the optimal (static) policy response.

Attempts to restrict free trade of goods through manipulating food systems can often backfire, causing famine when some households are left with insufficient resources. In this light, supporting the Government of Rwanda and the Ministry of Agriculture (MINAGRI) in diagnostic systems that would enable the targeting of policies and social safety programmes could be crucial for the sector's growth over the coming months.

Agricultural production requires timely application of labour and inputs, as delays of weeks or even days can cripple production. While agriculture is an essential industry in Rwanda's economy and employs a significant proportion of the country's population, there are important potential upsides from investment in data systems on which (if any) crops are most likely to see production fall in order to inform anticipatory policy.

As the Ministry of Agriculture (MINAGRI) plans and implements future policies and programmes, the data collection proposed by this project will serve to provide estimates on the incidence of shocks to enable data-driven policymaking.