From August 20 to 24, 2024, RP-Karongi College hosted a training workshop focused on “Market Access and Climate Change”, bringing together farmers and Service Training and Innovation Centres (STIC) coordinators from across the country.

To date, five STICs have been established in Horticulture, Poultry, Dairy, Agri-Tourism, and Potato sectors, aimed at strengthening partnerships among academia, government, and industry. This workshop was a collaborative effort involving Rwanda Polytechnic, Maastricht School of Management (MSM), and Holland GreenTech.

This workshop was developed in response to identified challenges within the Rwandan agricultural market, including significant produce wastage, low prices for smallholder farmers, and a lack of timely and relevant market information for all stakeholders.

These issues stem from long transaction chains between farmers and consumers, inadequate access to reliable market information, varying product quality from smallholder farmers, and poorly structured market systems.

The primary objective of the training was community outreach training aimed to equip participants with strategies to enhance market access, enabling them to effectively tackle these challenges and foster efficient, profitable marketing throughout the entire value chain.

 Additionally, the workshop aimed to identify climate-resilient technologies and practices that farmers can adopt to sustain productivity trends despite climate-induced challenges.

As part of the training, participants visited the IPRC Karongi Agricultural Zone, where they explored technologies utilized by students engaged in modern agricultural practices, including shade nets, nurseries, greenhouses, and irrigation systems.