KIGALI, RWANDA

Lack of follow up of Rwanda government’s ‘one cow per poor household’ program crucial to poverty reduction has faced a setback in its fourth year of implementation.

The program initiated in 2006 by President Kagame seeks to distribute cows to 250,000 households in absolute poverty at no cost.

The government and other Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) have distributed over 70,000 cows countrywide since 2006.

However, the program is currently under scrutiny after the government established that some cows had gone to the wrong beneficiaries.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources responsible for the implementation of the program say that it had distributed close to 55,000 cows under ‘on cow’ program, of which 15,000 must be returned and given to the right beneficiaries. 

In a live talk show on the state Media recently, the Minister of Agriculture Agnes Kalibata said that over 10,000 cows had already been returned.

The Minister admits that the program was poorly implemented and the Ministry did not follow it up.

She says the program was messed up by the local authorities who instead of distributing the cows to the right beneficiaries, in most cases kept them for their own welfare.

However, critics accuse the Ministry of having issued the criteria that were based on to distribute the cows. The Ministry had ordered that for a household to receive a cow, it had to show the capacity to take care of the animal.

 Therefore, based on this criterion, the cows ended up in the hands of local authorities and other well to do households.

This action has hitherto resulted into serious reaction from the poor households who did not the cows.

The angry households exposed the weaknesses in the implementation of the program during the national dialogue conference held towards the end of 2009. 

President Kagame, who was in the conference that was live on both state TV and radio, ordered the immediate return of the cows given errantly so that they could be given to the right beneficiaries.

The government says that the program has been instrumental in reducing poverty in the past three years in which households have benefited on Milk and manure from the cows.

The returned cows will be redistributed to the right beneficiaries until 250,000 needy households get a cow each.

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