News

David Leysenns joined Rikolto as Regional Director on 1st August 2019. Mr. Leyssens studied Communication Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB; 2004) and has an additional one-year training from Vlerick, called the Young Manager Acceleration Programme. While at Vlerick, David was an ambassador for the “follow your dream campaign”.

Rikolto started a programme in the beginning of 2018 to support private sector in Tanzania to expand pulses trade in and from Tanzania. East African Grain Council and Tanzania Pulses Network are the main partners in this programme.

In the often-crowded central market in the heart of Arusha, Baraka Mponda arranges his fresh vegetables ready for the buyers. He realises that more and more consumers are becoming aware of what they are buying and demand quality safe produce. Read how Rikolto is working together with the Arusha Council to improve public health and build an effective food safety system.

The Ugandan government is developing a new National Rice Development Strategy for the period 2020-2030. Environmental sustainability is a new item on the agenda. Our colleague John Ereng was invited to provide input on our experience in developing and applying the global standard for sustainable rice.

In the course of 2017 and 2018, while we rolled out several activities in our programmes areas in the region, we hit several milestones, sometimes faced a few bumps, but soldered on to report to you some. Open to read the whole report.

Rikolto's Rice Cluster members met in May for a week of field-visiting, cluster meeting and learning exchange in Uganda. During the six-day sprint, rice sector experts from Senegal, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Indonesia and Vietnam managed to complete a 2-day meeting to share insights, evaluate progress and explore strategic approaches to move forward within the rice programme.

Rikolto hosts 40 young people from the Uganda, Kenya, DRC, Tanzania and Rwanda in a workshop to learn more about food systems in East Africa and how to make them more sustainable. The workshop is organised in collaboration with Young Professional for Agricultural Development (YPARD), and is supported by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Things that don’t change don’t grow and develop. You must change and rebrand yourself to fit in the new circumstances because the world is changing,” Hon. Christopher Kibazanga said. Rikolto, an Esperanto word for ‘harvest,’ had earlier been unveiled as the brand identity for the global Vredeseilanden/VECO brand. Quite often, different speakers found themselves intermixing the former and the new brands in their speeches, quickly acknowledging that a nomenclature transition was still happening.