February 5, 2015

Rwanda has a current economic growth rate of 8%, which the country aims to increase to 8.5% next year with significant support from agriculture, after impressively rebounding from civil unrest and genocide. Last year Howard Buffet’s Sequoia Farm Foundation announced a 10-year plan to invest $500 million to transform the country’s agriculture sector above subsistence farming. The foundation will fund the country’s irrigation project encompassing 380 square miles of farmland, and will provide funding for an agricultural training institute similar to U.S. universities which will employ conservation agriculture technologies gained at Buffet’s research farm in Arizona and from sister projects in Illinois. Agriculture contributes 35% Rwanda’s gross domestic product (GDP) and employs 80% of the country, and in 2014, investment in the country’s ag sector was $17.9 million, with the sector receiving a total $514 million in private investment over the past ten years. The country is aiming to increase irrigation threefold, and although Buffet’s investment is the largest ever made in the country’s ag sector, Buffet emphasizes that there remains a large gap in funding and calls for additional investors to fill the need.

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