Kigali May 28, 2019: The Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources (MINAGRI) was awarded this year’s Edouard Saouma Award, a global prize instituted by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), for outstanding efforts in involving youth in Rwanda’s agriculture transformation.
MINAGRI has been selected as joint winner, with the Ministry of National Food Security and Research in Pakistan for Strengthening youth roles and access in the Agricultural sector in Rwanda.
The Award consists of an inscribed medal, a scroll describing the winner’s achievements and a cash prize of USD 25,000. Winners are presented with the award by the Director-General at a special ceremony held during the year of the FAO Conference.
The award will be presented to Rwanda during the 41st FAO Conference on Wednesday 26 June to be held in Rome, Italy.
The award winning project, "Strengthening youth roles and access in the Agricultural sector in Rwanda" funded by the FAO Technical Cooperation Programme (TCP) has supported the establishment of Rwanda Youth Involvement in Agribusiness (RYAF), a platform that brings together different youth organizations, individual youth farmers and entrepreneurs in Agriculture Sector working in one or many of the agriculture value chains.
To date, Rwandan youth involved in Agriculture who are registered under RYAF counts to 12,000+ with more than 1,300 businesses. These youth are categorized in 5 clusters based on what they do, i.e Agro-processing, Livestock production, Crop production, Inputs and Agro-services, and ICT4Agriculture.
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