Rwanda’s government says the country urgently needsto find some 30,000 hectares of banana plantations to meet export demand inEurope and the US, the Rwanda News Agency reports.
Rwanda, Africa, cultivates around 100 hectares ofbananas, mainly to the east of the country, according to the RwandaAgricultural Development Authority (RADA), but more land is needed to grow the‘Kamparamasenge’ banana species common in Rwanda for markets abroad.
RADA’s Dr Charles Murekezi told a meeting of farmersand agriculture stakeholders last week that markets had been found in France,the UK and the US for this banana type.
But Dr Murekezi encountered resistance from farmers,who said they had been encouraged to cultivate certain products before that hadnot yielded the benefits they had been promised.
The farmers also expressed concern over theexpanding banana wilt disease, which has been ravaging the crop across thisregion. Banana experts from the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture(IITA) have described the bacteria as “banana HIV”.
Some 500 hectares of banana will be planted by theend of September, according to RADA.
