Rural Poverty in Rwanda Rwanda,

Rural Poverty in Rwanda

Rwanda, located in east central Africa, is one of the smallest and most densely populated countries in Africa. Seventy-eight percent of its total population of 9.9 million lives in rural areas; most of the rural population of the country lives in abject poverty ("Rwanda," 2007).

Rwanda's economy is largely based on subsistence agriculture. Bananas, sweet potatoes, beans, and rice are the major food crops; tea and coffee the main cash crops, and cattle and goats the main livestock. Overgrazing, soil exhaustion, and soil erosion, combined with population pressures have prevented the agriculture to develop beyond the subsistence level. Occasional droughts and reliance of the rural population on firewood as fuel has drastically reduced the country's forest cover and led to widespread desertification. Moreover, since Rwanda is a landlocked country, it is expensive for its farmers to export their cash crops.

In addition to these inherent problems, Rwanda has suffered from deep ethnic division and rivalry since its independence from colonial rule in 1962, which exploded into a bloody civil war between the Hutu and the Tutsi tribes in 1994, resulting in the massacre of up to one million Rwandans and displacement of two million refugees. The genocide and a high HIV / AIDS epidemic rate (recent estimates by the Ministry of Health suggest that 8.7% of the rural population is infected) has severely disrupted the population demographics, weakened human resources development, and resulted in reduced availability of agricultural labor ("Rural Poverty in Rwanda," 2007).