RARICO
Rwanda Animal Resources Improvement Cooperative (RARICO) has been working with fish farmers across Rwanda since 2018 with a mission of disseminating fish farming skills and knowledge to rural farmers and transferring technologies through the provision of well-skilled technicians. With 50 permanent staff, they are working with fish farmers using ponds, dams and cages. RARICO was founded under the guidance and mentoring of MINAGRI and RAB. It has approximately 90 members of different education profiles such as animal sciences, veterinary medicine, aquaculture and aquatic resources management, and related fields.
Increased Technical and Business Development Support Services to Cooperatives and SMEs Growing Fish in Rwanda
Started in February 2024, this 16-month project supported smallholder farmer cooperatives and SMEs to access affordable and relevant business development services from a market-based service provider in the form of RARICO. First, CASA partnered with RARICO to offer subsidised technical extension services to selected cooperatives and SMEs to demonstrate the benefits of paying full cost for such services in the future. However, in the meantime RARICO became involved in a joint project of RAB (Rwanda Agriculture Board) and Enabel (the Belgian development organisation) after which it was jointly agreed that Enabel would take on the technical service provision while CASA would focus on developing the supply and demand of business development services, such as cooperative management and governance, and skills training to build capacity of farmer enterprises to improve their business performance. The objective of this project then became to develop viable training, technical assistance and marketing of cooperative governance and BDS services that smallholder farmer cooperatives and SMEs would become willing to pay for and to foster links between RARICO and enterprises in a way that could be replicated by other service providers.
At a total cost £124,775 (of which £75,225 was from CASA), the project provided technical assistance in capacity building to develop fiduciary management tools; mapping and needs assessment of smallholder cooperatives and SMEs; developing relevant, affordable, demand-led technical and business support services; and piloting the pricing and delivery of the services to 34 cooperatives and 11 SMEs. The work included 1,309 farmers who are each projected to earn an additional income as a result.
RARICO has found that almost 25% of farmers trained are willing to pay for these services when there is a need in future. While financial constraints continue to keep such demand low, this percentage is expected to increase once more farmers turn around their businesses using their newly-acquired business management skills. Meanwhile, for farmers with limited finances, RARICO plans to reach and train them whenever they can raise some small funds to cater for facilitation fees for extensionists.
Updated: March 2026