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Paper short abstract:

In this paper, we argue that to understand food price hikes in Rwanda, one should not look externally to the global market, but rather internally to national agrarian reform that has been taking place in the country.

Paper long abstract:

Articles which examine the impact of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) on the global south have tended to explain increased food prices as a direct consequence of global events - citing higher fuel costs/transportation costs, climate change, uncertainty of future supply and the impact of future food insecurity. In Rwanda, where 80% of the population are subsistence farmers, and 90% of the countries food consumption is produced locally, one must look elsewhere to explain the exponential of food prices. In this paper, we argue that to understand food price hikes in Rwanda, one should not look externally to the global market, but rather internally to national agrarian reform that has been taking place in the country.

Where previously people cultivated to be food secure, and sold cash crops and excess food crops, now farmers produce crops according to the government's regional specialisation and mono-cropping policies. However, limited regional market integration and extremely low bargaining power of local farmers means smallholders do not profit from the new policies. As a result, this has limited the variations of food types that smallholder farmers have access to. Indeed, 1) farmers produce a lower number of crops and 2) the lack of production of certain crops means that the price of these crops on the market has gone up (crops which they previously would have grown themselves).