News

What can we learn from farmers in Kenya? An exchange visit showed that innovative tools are creating incentives for smallholder farmers to adopt good agricultural techniques and increase productivity.

Building on the knowledge and learning of vegetable and fruit projects in northern Tanzania, Rikolto will now expand its activities to five regions: Iringa, Njombe, Mbeya, Songwe, and Katavi.

Rikolto Country Office in Uganda has signed a Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) with the Microfinance Support Centre (MSC) to facilitate affordable financial services and strengthen management capacities of small holder farmers organised in agricultural Cooperatives. The MoU will also extend support to Small and Medium Enterprises and enable employment creation for the youth through business development services (BDS).

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.