Within 10 days, 3 Agri-Finance Fairs have been held in Burundi (August 22-23), Rwanda (August 28-29) and DR Congo (August 28-30). Busy times for the Great Lakes region!

Burundi
In Burundi the fair was organised in a high seminary near the very small village of Kyama, Brururi. This site had been chosen to see the effect of a fair in a really remote area after having had two big fairs in the capital, Bujumbura. It took quite some effort to convince innovative entrepreneurs to come and take a stand in such a remote place. At the other hand we were lucky to find that the President of the Republic himself happened to be in the area and kindly agreed to open the Fair, together with the Minister of Agriculture and the Dutch Ambassador, mr. Jolke Oppewal. So at the opening some 1000 visitors came to see the President. The fact that almost a third of them were children however, also showed that not all of them had come to do business. The thirty standholders offering all kind of products and services did do quite some business however. Almost all of them reported to be sold out at the end of the event.

Rwanda
In Rwanda the fair was held in Nyanza, Southern Province and drew some 600 visitors the first day.

DR Congo
The most spectacular of the three fairs held in the Great Lakes region was the one held in Butembo, North Kivu. Butembo, lying some 300 kilometers north of Goma had never seen such a big Agricultural event. Within three days 7000 visitors came to see what the 96 stands had on offer. The organisation of this event 450 kilometer away from the Agri-Hub office in Bukavu had been a headache and very expensive too, as travel by road still is not safe in Eastern DRC. However the local organising committee had done a terrific job and all efforts paid out. Finance institutions were connected to Farmers Organisations and agreements have been made to boost Agricultural Finance in the region. The Agri-Hub RDCongo coordination team will make haste to discuss with the Dutch partners how to shape future support of Agri-ProFocus coordination to our members in this remote area.

Contactperson Great Lakes Region: Jan Willem Eggink ([email protected])