BANANA PRODUCTION, POST HARVEST AND MARKETING IN RWANDA

by Mukantwali Christine, Shingiro Jean Bosco, Dusengemungu Leonidas

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

A survey aiming at assessing banana production and post harvest status was conducted on 286 farmers and farmers associations in most producing areas of East, West, North and Southern province of Rwanda. Results showed that more than 29 banana varieties are cultivated. The main signs of mature banana ready for harvest were the banana starting to ripen, banana fingers big enough and small male buds. The long sunny season (June-August) was indicated as harvesting period. Each farmer harvests around 30.9 banana bunches per month and that most of the brewing bananas are processed into banana juice and beer. It was noted that banana processing is done traditionally with less cleanliness and that improvement of the technology is highly needed.

Most of the cooking bananas are sold at 21.58 FRW per kilogramme but also there is a certain amount of cooking banana which is consumed. Dessert banana are also either consumed or sold. Farmers encounter constraints of not being able to store mature bananas due to their perishability and this leads to selling banana at a very low price during overproduction period. Only few farmers associations are exporting dessert bananas to Europe and neighboring countries. Banana leaves, stems and peels are used as animal feeds. The majority of the farmers do not have easy access to the market of raw bananas or the processed products such as banana juice or beer. This leads to the use of non processed and non sold bananas as for manure preparation for banana fields.
Although banana is traditionally processed and that there is limited access to the market for raw banana and banana products, banana was considered as a very important crop as it brings cash to the farmers.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Scientists’ team would like to thank the Rwanda Community surveyed for their support and encouragement during data collection. We took quite a lot of their time for which we are grateful. We believe that they will continue with the same zeal as we enter in the next steps of the findings towards this research, so that together we can address the identified constraints for the benefit of the farmers in particular and the rest of the partners in general. Our thanks are also directed to different Sectors administrations for arranging the field visits and for allowing some of their staff to work with us. The support of BARNESA/CIALCA/ISAR Project enabled us to implement the task without financial troubles. On the same note we would like to thank the entire accounting and administrative staff of ISAR for logistical support.