A Big Network in a Small Country – cooperation between research, church and farmers in Burundi

Wedged between the hills and valleys of Rwanda, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the great Lake Tanganyika, is the small country of Burundi.

The density of people in this East African nation is a close second in Africa only to Rwanda, its neighboring country. While its size can be a challenge, it can also be a virtue. Everyone here—from organizations, communities, and farmers—is a neighbor, making collaboration across these sectors easier to accomplish.

In Burundi, organizations like Episcopal Relief & Development and the Anglican Church of Burundi’s Community Development office facilitates collaboration between organizations, communities, and farmers.

Bringing people together to put food on the table

This ease is exemplified by the work of Episcopal Relief & Development, which is conducted in partnership with the Anglican Church of Burundi’s Community Development office (PEAB in French) in Bujumbura, Burundi. Together, Episcopal Relief & Development and PEAB implement a comprehensive sustainable livelihoods program. The goal is to support small farming families to work toward greater food security for their households. This translates into turning the often one-meal-a-day routine into a habit of consuming three meals each day that include more protein, vegetables, and fruits.

Program Coordinator for PEAB, Leonidas Niyongabo, talking with a group of farmers.

PEAB and Episcopal Relief & Development continuously work to foster partnerships within the country and region by cultivating relationships with technical branches of the government, research institutions, private enterprises, and other community development organizations. For example, PEAB is currently working with the following groups to help small farmers optimize productivity on their land:

The Institute of Agricultural Research of Burundi (ISABU): ISABU works to research, store, and disseminate quality crop varieties in Burundi.

International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA): IITA is a global agricultural research organization with an office in Burundi. Their Burundi work focuses on combatting the disease known as Banana Xanthomonas Wilt (BXW), which is causing widespread damage to banana crops across East Africa. The Institute is focusing on methods that farmers and governments can use to limit the spread of disease.

Agrobiotech: Agrobiotech is a Belgian-linked enterprise focused on the production of clean planting material for bananas. They use tissue culture to produce disease-free banana plantlets, which are then sold. Use of tissue-culture plantlets is providing a new opportunity for farmers to fight this disease.

Together, these institutes are generating knowledge on existing and new crop varieties appropriate for Burundi. They work to preserve desirable characteristics in varieties that are currently in use, and to continuously find ways to improve these varieties to achieve a higher yield, better resistance to pests or diseases, or more resilience to climate challenges (like drought). They also pull knowledge from the larger research network on policy and farm-level methods that can be used to improve productivity, and work to adapt these suggestions for the local context.

This knowledge, however, is not beneficial unless it can be shared and used by farmers in the country. PEAB serves as a liaison for an extensive network of more than 19,000 small farmers by connecting these institutions with members of the network.

In our follow up, we will discuss how PEAB is working with farmers to explore cultivation practices that are most suitable to each area of Burundi.

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Read the continuation of this post here: In Burundi, seeing the writing in the hillsides means working with farmers

The photographs featured here were provided by Sara Delaney.

Sara Delaney is a Senior Program Officer for Episcopal Relief & Development. Her organization works closely with Burundian farmers via the Anglican Church of Burundi’s Community Development office (PEAB in French) in Burundi. 

Leonidas Niyongabo is a Program Coordinator of the Province of the Anglican Church of Burundi Community Development Program.