LEX-FAOC040453

The Rwanda Livestock Master Plan (LMP) is a national sectoral plan of Rwanda for the period of 2017/18-2021/22. The main objectives of the Plan include reducing poverty, achieving food and nutritional security, increasing economic growth, increasing exports, contributing to industrialization and employment, and mitigating climate change. The LMP aims to achieve food and nutritional security by increasing household herd and national production levels and by also increasing availability of animal source foods to meet FAO individual consumption targets. Further, it sets out measures concerning investment interventions which could help meet the national development plan targets of Rwanda by improving productivity and total production in the key livestock value chains for cow dairy, red meat-milk, poultry, and pork. According to the document, if the Plan is successfully implemented, the resulting further modernization of the sector has the potential to have a substantial positive impact on livestock keepers by increasing their incomes and the food and nutritional security of their households. Further, the document aims to reduce rural poverty by increasing income per animal and in livestock keeping households. More specifically, four key livestock value chains—live animals and red meat and milk (from indigenous cattle, sheep, and goats), dairy with crossbred cows, and chicken and pigs—were identified as producing the greatest productivity increases contributing to national economic development objectives and the long-run development of the sector. The LMP provides measures focusing on these four key value chains but also adds two sub-value chains: smallholder family and commercial specialized production systems. Moreover, in order to enable more inclusive and efficient agricultural and food systems, the following measures are set out: giving priority to an increase in productivity or production per animal, by addressing the feed deficit, animal health and genetics; more investment in milk processing to ensure stable market prices; implementing balanced policies to encourage investment in animal production and meat processing to meet domestic per capita meat consumption also helping with export promotion; special incentives (to improve the business climate, lower taxes, and increased training) that promote more value addition through processing and product transformation, combined with a clearer role of the public and private sector; promotion of exports to more remunerative markets through the introduction of a practical and affordable system of animal ID and traceability; strengthening animal health infrastructure, quarantine facilities and services; increasing economic growth (by increasing livestock contributions to GDP); and increasing exports (by increasing production beyond domestic consumption requirements). Finally, increasing the resilience of livelihoods and disasters is among the objectives of this Plan. To this end, the document provides for mitigating climate change by focusing more on introducing low emitting livestock species for meat (chicken and pork), and dairy intensification through introduction of higher productivity crossbreds in order to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; increasing production and consumption of low GHG-emitting chickens and pig; and dramatically regulating the higher GHG emitters, especially cattle as well as rapid reduction of local breeds of all species.