Rwanda

PRICE (Project for Rural Incomes through Exports) is a new project operating under National Agricultural Development Exports Board (NAEB) that has general objective of raising smallholder farmers’ income and financed by IFAD. To achieve this, the project’s development objective is to promote sustainable increased returns to farmers from key export-driven agricultural value chains through increased volumes and quality of production, improved marketing and effective farmer organizations that include a turnaround programme. The overall objective for the Turnaround Programme is to provide management, operational and governance support to the tea cooperatives, to have sustainable profitability and proper management structures

PRICE (Project for Rural Incomes through Exports) is a new project operating under National Agricultural Development Exports Board (NAEB) that has general objective of raising smallholder farmers’ income and financed by IFAD. To achieve this, the project’s development objective is to promote sustainable increased returns to farmers from key export-driven agricultural value chains through increased volumes and quality of production, improved marketing and effective farmer organizations that include a turnaround programme. The overall objective for the Turnaround Programme is to provide management, operational and governance support to the tea cooperatives, to have sustainable profitability and proper management structures.

The specific objectives which formed the outputs of this assignment included:

• Undertook a diagnostic assessment of the six cooperatives to establish the areas of need for the capacity building and training to achieve the overall objective of the turnaround.
• Developed training materials based on the identified needs covering governance aimed at improving the management and governance of tea cooperatives and are well organized and have acquired legal status;; capacity gaps among the cooperatives aimed at strengthening the technical capacity of tea cooperatives; business skills/knowledge development aimed at improving banking linkage and access to finance, and international market knowledge for small farmers cooperatives; closing the gaps in leave production by the cooperative members through best tea agronomy practices aimed at increasing returns to tea growers after tea sales on international market, and volumes and quality of tea leaves produced by the six green fields  supported by Price project; and financial management courses aimed at ensuring that the cooperatives have developed appropriate procedure manuals and business plans, and development of capacity for them to be able to prepare physical and financial progress reports as well as financial statements leading to the audit purpose.
• Undertook the delivery of the training whereby the selected teams of trainees from the six cooperatives were divided into two groups each being trained for a period of 12 days covering all the modules. The training was organized in a system normally referred to as the FAO field schools system.

The classroom training was followed up with capacity building in the field where the consultants practically worked with the various trainees to ensure that the good practices trained in the classroom are well implemented in a coordinated manner.