Rwanda: land of a thousand hills

UNESCO Courier, Nov, 1991 by Charles Jeanneret

SITUATED in the heart of Africa, Rwanda is a relatively small country (26,338 square kilometres), yet with nearly eight million inhabitants it has the highest population density of any nation in Africa south of the Sahara.

The relief of the land is uneven. A chain of volcanoes in the north gives way in the east and south to wooded savannah and plateaux dotted with innumerable hills. The west is dominated by the Zaire-Nile watershed, a group of rugged mountain ranges dissected by deep valleys. It is hardly surprising that Rwanda is known as the land of a thousand hills.

Demographic pressure, the smallness of the country and the growing scarcity of land combine with a shortage of natural resources and a land-locked position to make Rwanda a test-case for all the knottiest problems of sustainable development. The principal objectives of this largely agricultural country has always been to achieve self-sufficiency in food while also creating jobs and wealth by encouraging the production of goods to increase national purchasing power.

THE ENVIRONMENT:

A NATIONAL

PREOCCUPATION

Even though Rwanda lives under the constant threat of food shortages, more than 10 per cent of its territory is given over to nature reserves of great importance. These include the Virunga National Park in the north of the country, the home of the last mountain gorillas, and in the south the Nyungwe Forest, which besides providing a habitat for certain rare species of monkey is also the largest stretch of high primary forest left in Africa--and now one of the last.

Protecting these reserves is vital for Rwanda's ecological and hydrological balance, as well as for the biological diversity of its ecosystems. But a policy of conservation can also be justified economically in terms of the potential it creates for an intelligently-run tourist industry that will not harm the nation's extraordinary flor and fauna.

As a result of the soaring population, the borders of the reserves are being steadily infiltrated by poachers and people seeking food. Measures envisaged to protect the ecological heritage include plans to create natural barriers of vegetation as well as to increase research, improve surveillance and launch publicity campaigns to make people aware of the need to preserve areas vital to the nation's ecological survival.

Big efforts are being made to improve and restore the ecological heritage. A reforestation campaign launched over twenty-five years ago won widespread popular support and has been an undeniable success. Since 1973 a National Tree Day, marked by plantings across the country, has also reflected the need for a reforestation strategy. The planting of new forests has provided Rwanda with an important renewable resource, supplying the materials for a timber industry that, although still small and decentralized, has great potential for the future.

Other year-long campaigns have also been launched in support of agriculture. There has been a Soil Conservation Year, an Organic Manure Year, a Year of the Struggle against Erosion--all of them aimed at boosting efforts to achieve self-sufficiency in food.

THE THREAT

TO AGRICULTURE

The agricultural sector, which employs 93 per cent of the working population, consists primarily of highly productive smallholdings, three-quarters of which are less than one and a half hectares. Rwanda has neither large estates nor the rural proletariat that goes with them, and most agricultural products, even the so-called industrially produced commodities such as coffee, tea and pyrethrum, are grown on these small family properties. One side-effect of this is that income in the rural areas is relatively evenly distributed.

Until quite recently, Rwanda produced agricultural surpluses, thanks to a policy that guaranteed minimum prices for foodstuffs, the introduction of new plant varieties and species, accelerated crop rotation, and a highly effective saving and loans system.

Other factors also played a part. The climate of Rwanda usually permets two and sometimes even three harvests a year. The country is socially and linguistically homogeneous, and has no geopolitical commitments to distract it from the problems of its own survival. There are no natural resources to attract speculation. The farming population firmly resists any threats to its livelihood, while not being averse to innovation. Politically, the nation is enviably stable.

Unfortunately, however, in the last few years things have taken a turn for the worse. Accelerating population growth is partly responsible, but a growing number of external factors have also been to blame.

Unusual weather conditions, including drought and torrential rain, have exposed the fragility of Rwanda's overburdened agricultural system, which now seemingly exploits every square metre of available land. Disaster is never far away. Overintensive farming and the lack of new land are the principal constraints that, under the pressure of an expanding population, have pushed Rwandese agriculture towards breaking-point. Several parts of the country suffered food shortages in 1989.