Rwanda has become the largest consumer of wheat in East Africa.

The government, together with the World Bank, is to fund the sector with the aim of putting more land under wheat cultivation.

Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Trade and Industries Eammanuel Hategeka said the Rwanda Agriculture Board (RAB) has been distributing new hybrid seeds to farmers — a project started in 2012. The project seeks to ensure that milling companies bake with locally produced wheat.

Mr Hategeka said millers are importing most of the wheat they use from Argentina, Australia, Canada, and Russia.

“The millers import 90 per cent of the wheat processed for making bread,” said the minister.

However, Kenya and Tanzania — East Africa’s biggest producers of wheat — are looking to cash in on the demand in Rwanda.

Rwanda received over 8,500 tonnes of exported wheat from Tanzania and Kenya between October 26 last year and January 26 this year, about two months since the harvest commenced in both countries.

With a growing population and the establishment of more milling companies, the Rwanda Development Board forecasts that the demand for wheat will grow to 186,261 tonnes next year. In total, the country imports 123,0000 tonnes of wheat annually.

The government is currently looking to put 55,000 hectares of land under wheat and by October last year it had cultivated 43,000 hectares.

In 2014, the World Bank gave Rwanda and Burundi a $300,000 grant to help in efforts to scale up wheat production. The money was to partly be spent on input subsidies.