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ÂÒÂ׺£½Ç the Project

In Burundi, a $2.34 million aims to support small family farmers who are members of CAPAD cooperatives to be resilient against the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, while sustainably improving their income and food security. The project aims to do so by supporting the quantitative and qualitative increase in the supply of multipurpose bananas and their marketing and developing the capacity building of cooperatives in support of the marketing of products. 

The banana sector was selected for this project because it is the most commercialized agricultural production in volume and value, representing 14 percent of Burundi’s GDP and 38 percent of agricultural GDP, and involving more than 1,300,000 farm households. The development of semi-industrial and industrial processing and the recent strengthening of inter-professional cooperation between the sector’s actors (producers, processors, and traders) will stimulate wealth creation along the value chains. The project will target Moso, one of the areas most affected by the pandemic in Burundi, where socio-economic recovery is slow to take hold. The activities will focus on nine CAPAD cooperatives and which are over 4,800 members, including small and medium-sized family farmers banana producers 52 percent of whom are women, affected by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The project will provide market opportunities and income to banana producers, who currently face difficulties in exporting and selling their produce on the local market. It will strengthen the operational capacity of cooperatives in the region to provide better economic and commercial services to their members. The investment in strengthening the resilience of producers is justified by the existence of market opportunities for banana juice and the presence of the banana juice processor (SOCOPA) located in the project area. SOCOPA plans, through additional investments, to double its production capacity by 2022 in certain markets, such as that natural gas and non-gas banana juice, coveted for their nutritional qualities. Negotiations/discussions are also underway with the World Food Programme (WFP) to promote the consumption of these banana juices in school canteens, through WFP’s school feeding program.   

The project will introduce new types of plant material, such as banana plants, and multi-purpose varieties, allowing the production of bananas for juice or cooking banana, and varieties producing a fruit rich in vitamin A. To ensure wider dissemination of the new varieties, the project collaborates with private sector partners to multiply the variety in laboratories.  

The interventions of the cooperatives involved will, improve the governance of the cooperatives and increase the efficiency of the banana sector in a cooperative spirit, favorable to the producers, resulting in smallholder farmers' income increase.