From September 2023 to June 2025, the project “Digital Information System for Sustainable and Climate-Resilient Agriculture in Rwanda” (DISA) was carried out as part of the Federal-State Programme. The aim of the project was to promote the development of a digital information system by Rwandan government institutions for sustainable and climate-resilient agriculture, with a particular focus on addressing the gender-specific concerns of Rwandan women farmers.
The project’s findings show that individual measures that are easy to implement can have a significant impact on agricultural productivity. Practical application has demonstrated that the use of digitally recorded local climate and weather data to generate detailed recommendations for crop cultivation leads, compared to farming without such data, to significant reductions in pesticide use, a decrease in environmental impact and economic improvements for agricultural holdings. Taking weather data and recommendations based on it into account for local agriculture helps farmers to apply seeds, pesticides or fertilisers at the right time and in the right way, as well as to avoid crop losses. With this knowledge, farmers can, on the one hand, quickly and easily reduce effort and costs and, on the other hand, minimise the environmental footprint of their operations.
During the project period, DISA was successfully installed as a permanent IT application at the Rwanda Space Agency (RSA). The resulting infrastructure and technical implementation offer the potential to provide direct access to private and public stakeholders in the country’s agricultural sector. The application is supplemented by data from digital projects run by other stakeholders. This is ensured through regular cross-project exchanges facilitated by the ‘Digital Transformation and Digital Economy’ cluster in Kigali, which is managed by GIZ.
In line with findings and feedback to date, this project aims to further develop the DISA application, whilst also taking gender-specific issues into account in the further development and practical application of DISA. Female peer groups are to be established at village level. This was proposed by women during the in-depth workshops. Furthermore, as the project continues, opportunities are to be explored and, where appropriate, implemented to address the limited access to digital media (e.g. due to the low prevalence of smartphones in rural areas) and the sometimes low literacy levels of the rural population, such as through voice-activated chatbots.
(Project objective:) In the continuation of the project, farmers will be enabled to use the digital information system for the agricultural sector in practical applications and will have access to the DISA platform, into which further use cases for pilot regions and arable crops will be integrated.