News

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.

For the last two years, Rikolto has been implementing a big project in Uganda, called Food Trade. The project linked smallholder staple food surpluses to regional markets. At the end of the project we noticed that farmers received 12% better prices for their commodities relative to the prevailing market prices.

Transforming food systems was the key theme at Mount Meru Hotel, Arusha, on 7 December 2017, where the new Rikolto brand was launched. Rikolto is the Esperanto word for ‘harvest’ and the Rikolto team committed to enable farmers to experience good harvests and to ensure great new ideas and solutions are harvested in order to improve food systems.

Colleague Jasmine Mushi, Agribusiness Advisor, shares the story of MUVIKHO, a Tanzanian cooperative of fruit and vegetable farmers which has grown from nothing to over 700 farmers in 4 years time, and now generates sales of over US$ 210,000 each year.

Michael Munah, Agribusiness advisor for VECO, takes you along on a field visit trip to Simanjiro area in Tanzania. Read how his work gradually contributes towards more food security in the area.