Abstract:
The food insecurity is the most powerful source of many different problems and
conflict in the greater part of the world and Africa especially the sub-Saharan region is
where these problems are based nowadays. Also, in Rwanda the traces of food insecurity
are remarkable like there is a number of people who are still under poverty conditions,
there are still malnutrition cases, stunted growth in children and the like. The Rwandan
government is constantly striving to find programs and strategies to deal with and
mitigate all of these problems, and the most important program is to upgrade Rwandan
agricultural production through various strategies, one of which is the provision of
agriculture subsidies to people. This is due to the fact that agriculture employs more than
70% of Rwanda's population. And it is at this point that this research (an evaluation of the
effectiveness of agricultural subsidies in improving food security in Rwanda) was carried
out in Nyabihu District, one of Rwanda's agricultural regions. This research was carried
out in Nyabihu district one of seven district of western province, using a questionnaire
and interview, the sample was composed of 100 respondents that are beneficiaries of
agricultural subsidies in the said district. The data analysis was done using excel spread
sheet and SPSS version 23.
The findings revealed that in Nyabihu District, people use subsidies at various levels
based on demographic socioeconomic characteristics (age, gender, marital status,
employment status, education level, and household size) as well as their attitudes toward
the provision and use of subsidies. In the findings of this research, the people involved in
the use of subsidies 63% were males, 90% were above 30 years, 88% were married, 53%
had primary level, 85% were farmers and 69% had above 3 family members. But
surprisingly by using the Chi square analysis only marital status, employment status and
the kind of used subsidies showed a statistical relation to the improvement of food
security. Not only from this aspect but also people involved in using subsidies in Nyabihu
District strongly agree with the programs, distribution policy of subsidies in the line of
improvement their food security and also they are being aware of other factors affecting
their agriculture production later on their food security. This research after using logistic regression showed that marital status, employment status, and the attitudes upon the
subsidies presented a positive statistical influence to the improvement of agriculture
production and the improvement of food security in Nyabihu District which can be
inferred the whole country, Rwanda.
