From 20th to 24th January, 2020; five collaborative partners converged in Rwanda under the hosting of the GER for strategic planning and inception meeting on context, global trends analysis and policy review in Africa, conduct training on community dialogues and research on indigenous seeds and related knowledge and practices and conduct seed and food fair exchange festival at community level where GER is implementing agroecology interventions.
In his opening remarks, Innocent Musore from GER, the host, thanked ABN secretariat, collaborative partners and Agroecology Fund (AEF) for the financial support. He also thanked government officials and stakeholders for the collaboration. He said “The experience from ABN played a vital role in the development of GER in empowering communities we are working with, and it is giving positive changes.” He also referred to agroecological Practices as a sustainable solution to the effects of climate change through community knowledge exchange.
Participants were from the five collaborative partners of the ABN namely; Biowatch/SKI (Seed and Knowledge Initiative) from South Africa; Jeunes Volontaires pour l’Environnement (JVE) from Togo; Tanzania Alliance for Biodiversity (TABIO); Global Initiative for Environment and Reconciliation (GER) from Rwanda; and Maendeleo Endelevu Action Program (MEAP) from Kenya. With the funding from AgroEcology Fund to support work with five collaborative partners that span the East, West and Southern Africa, under the project: “Connecting Seeds, Culture and Nature to Strengthen Agroecological Practices and Food Sovereignty in Africa”hosted by GER in Rwanda.
Among local participants were farmers, youth, local leaders, and civil society organizations from three districts where GER is implementing this project; Bugesera, Muhanga, and Ruhango.
GER organized a visit to Kigali Genocide memorial and the campaign against genocide museum where both local and foreign participants were shown how the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi was Planed, prepared, executed and stopped. After the visit participants held a reflection dialogue.
Thereafter was an inception meeting of ABN’s five partners which was facilitated by Simon Mitambo from ABN. Simon made a presentation on the objective and the vision of the project as well as the way of planning, monitoring and evaluation. He also presented the methodology and approach of ABN in implementing its projects. Each partner also made a presentation of their experience and activities they are carrying out in their respective countries. The aim of this inception meeting was to share experience and learn from each other. Participants appreciated the meeting and they held a reflection on the previous presentation of the partners. They also reflected on the effects of the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi where more than 1 million people were killed and the loss of other biodiversity. They recommended carrying out an informative study. The collaborative partners are working to strengthen agroecological practices and food sovereignty through connecting seeds with culture and nature.
Partners also had time to meet farmers’ communities from the three mentioned districts, civil society organizations and local leaders. The community dialogue training took place at grassroots level in the nature. In these dialogues ABN’s methodologies provided the foundation on which agroecology can grow; facilitators (ABN) shared experience on how to facilitate dialogue and interactions using mysticas, storytelling, group discussions, plenary reflections and knowledge exchange with farmers.
One of participants said “I could not understand the role of taking off shoes and move around the nature barefoot. But when I stepped on the land with my feet, I felt the close connection with our land and nature.” Another participant said “when we were asked to collect plants from the nature I could not realize its purpose; but when people started explaining the plants they collected I came to know the variety of medicine.” This approach was very good because there were elders in the forum, whatever kind of plant that people could not realize elders helped to know the name of that plant and its role in Rwandan culture.
After the mysticas, a facilitator invited every participant to introduce themselves with at least four generations. He gave an example, where he introduced himself by his name, his father, his grandfather, and the father of his grandfather; he also said his clan and its totem. Communities were inspired by this approach, where those who had forgotten their clans and totem (especially youth) learnt them from elders who were in the forum. Through this approach, participants discovered the connection between themselves as Rwandans and the relationship with nature. This can be an effective approach to improve broken relations during the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi towards sustainable reconciliation.
Story telling was opened by Karangathi Njoroge from Tanzania, whose story was about the experience of communities living in Amazon forest. The story illustrated how the new education promoted urban migration in their community, “Where their children were very keen to move to town in order to see cars, modern roads and houses because they heard about them in class but they had never seen them with their eyes.”Because this incident was invading their original culture, and their children were all moving to towns, elders put themselves together to stop it and restore their original culture.
Another story was told by Tabaro Denis Natukunda from Uganda, whose story was about the Ugandan community known as Bagungu of Burisa area. This community lived naturally near the lake, and they lived on natural farming and fishing. “Later on, the government discovered oil in that area and they decided to give a lot of money to those native people to move them from that area. They cut down trees and fixed machinery in the lake to extract the oil.” Some of the communities moved to the town they ate the money until it finished, others were introduced to the biochemical farming technologies because they were told that their land were no longer yielding. Some people, especially elders, started suffering from new food and developed seeds.
Stories were very interesting; they helped participants to open up and reflected the story with their context where modern agriculture is playing a critical role in the extinction of indigenous seeds and biodiversity as well as land degradation using chemicals. The modern agriculture has also impacts on culture, food sovereignty, health, climate change issues and the disconnection of people with nature.
The closing day of the forums was a seed fair, an exhibition of variety of indigenous seeds and plants. Community who presented those seeds and crops in general were explaining their role as food, medication and their connection with the cultural history of Rwandans. Among the seeds presented include but not limited to sorghum, millet, beans, groundnuts, and so on.
Young people learning from elders during seed fair (Bugesera 2020)
During the seed fair, elders shared knowledge with young people on various indigenous plants and seeds. They reflected on the role of each as food, as medication for people and domestic animals and their connection with Rwandan culture. Those indigenous seeds and plants were also used to prepare local beers and natural pesticides for crops. The seed fair was very successful because much experience was learnt especially for the youth who were less informed about the indigenous seeds and their roles. The inter-generation learning helped in bridging the knowledge gap among the youth. The representatives of local leaders appreciated and said that the approach will help and sustain the conservation of nature and maintain community welfare.
Commitment of Participants
Participants pledged to revive indigenous seeds in their communities. They committed to share knowledge and experience from community dialogues to the young generation and their neighbours.
At the end of the forum participants wrote their objectives on pieces of paper as to demonstrate their way forward and future activities. Among the core commitments, we may include Iragena Micah, one of the citizens of Ruhango District, decided to sensitize and share information of agro-ecology and nature conservation by engaging his effort to revive indigenous seeds. “I am going to establish a demonstration field showing the proper use of organic manure alone and training other neighbors in our village.”He also made a decision of growing some indigenous trees and seeds that the ancestors used to grow as food and medicine, such as pumpkin, sorghum and Umuruku (medicinal plant).
After attending the whole forum and understood the role of indigenous seeds,“I am going to grow sorghum instead of growing beans in this season, on my 5ha of land, after realizing the importance of sorghum as food and in our Rwandan culture; I decide to produce more sorghum at Rwandan food market.”Said Safari Desire, a citizen of Gasabo District of The City of Kigali who is a model farmer. Mukarulinda Alice said that “through our famers association, we will conserve environment and biodiversity by trying to reduce using chemical fertilizers and pesticides; we decide this after understanding the story from Bagungu people of Uganda.” He also decided to start growing indigenous seeds where he will focus on sorghum, millet and yam. “We still need the support of GER and ABN to achieve this.”
The interactions understand the connection between seeds, nature and culture, exploring how this relationship can deliver the planet from collective issues of climate change. Focusing on the revival of seeds helps farmers to connect with nature and culture in ways that lead to a holistic approach in all their farming practices. Integral to this is the revival of related knowledge and practices, going beyond the current, mainstream development paradigm. Its innovative feature is that it was fully inclusive, building on local knowledge and resources, and age-old knowledge of seeds. It is driven by communities themselves,thus making it truly sustainable, and weaves in new ideas from other knowledge systems. It was also an effective approach of knowledge exchange hence bridging knowledge gap among the youth through inter-generation leaning.
Innocent from GER thanked every participant who pledged to do something so that they can revive indigenous seeds and maintain te community knowledge around those seeds. “These commitments and skills learnt from the forums and the action plan developed by communities will help us to follow up and evaluate the success of this program and the dissemination of knowledge and skills learnt from the community dialogue.” He said. Participants; both local communities and collaborative partners closed the community dialogues by enjoying and celebrating the Rwandan culture through dances and sharing local food.