I dreamt that farmers became millionaires—then I woke up in Kigali

June 26, 2025 in Land & Agriculture, Letters, Opinion by Editor

It began the way most great African folktales do. Not with a grand manifesto, but with a 3am dream. The kind that arrives after the beans have settled and the last mosquito has given up on you. I was soaring over Gatsibo and Nyagatare and it was the real Eden, not the Neva’s.

The gentle hills were all green, on top of each sat huge water tanks that provided gravitational irrigation, beautiful homes rested on the foothills.

The farms were bountiful, cows so well-groomed they could star in shampoo commercials, maize fields standing at attention like Buckingham palace guards, and farmers didn’t argue about land boundaries anymore. They were too busy counting money.

In the centre of this miracle was a company called Halisi Farmers, a name that sounded like it came from a Kenyan soap opera but turned out to be Rwanda’s quiet economic bombshell. These weren’t just farmers. No. These were corporate farmers in boots, running their farms like businesses and their cows like shareholders.

Now, let me tell you what Halisi did. They walked up to individual cattle farmers, not to take their land, but to activate its potential. Each farmer was asked to set aside 5 hectares for beef fattening farming. That’s right. Five hectares, each, home to 1,000 beef cows.

Then came the dairy chapter, the 4 hectares per farmer, and in there, 50 dairy cows producing a very humble 30 litres of milk per cow per day. Multiply that, and you’ll understand why even the village gossip abandoned her hobby and joined dairy farming. At 600 RWF per litre, the cows weren’t just producing milk. They were printing money.

But this wasn’t just a cooperative. Each of these operations was an individual business. Halisi was simply the genius in the background, the implementer, manager, trainer, and marketer. The farmer owned the business, got the loan from Rwanda Development Bank (BRD), and Halisi took care of everything else. From cow moods to maize drying temperatures.

And yes, the loans. In my dream, BRD had suddenly become your favorite uncle. The one who gives you money without asking for his phone charger back. The bank gave out individual loans, backed by real business plans, beef fattening, dairy farming, commercial maize, and even irrigated vegetables.

But here’s the twist: the loans were managed by Halisi Farmers, who ensured not one franc went to naming a bar. The farmers simply paid back their loans through deductions from yields, milk, and beef, no trips to the bank, no panic.

Meanwhile, Halisi trained each farmer to understand their own business. But instead of leaving them at the mercy of spreadsheets and cow hormones, they gave them jobs, yes, on their own farms! Imagine waking up, walking 50 metres, and clocking in as an employee of your own agricultural empire.

But wait—it gets dreamier. All the remaining land? Farmers consolidated it and it went into large-scale maize production. And no, not that one-man-one-hoeing-stick model.

We’re talking coordinated planting schedules, mechanized operations, digital soil analysis, and the kind of drone surveillance that would make NASA jealous. The yields were so impressive that goats began respecting fences.

Then came the big boys. Halisi set up a 20,000 MT silo complex with industrial dryers. No more crying about rains in August. The maize was processed into animal feed, which was fed back into the beef and dairy operations. That’s called a real circular economy, ladies and gentlemen.

And they didn’t stop there. With all this milk, Halisi became a direct supplier to Inyange Industries, adding value to dairy without the need for brokers who smell like petrol and uncertainty. Beef?

Also value-added, cleanly packaged, and proudly Rwandan-excellent. The vegetables grown under gravity-fed irrigation systems from tanks on every hill? Sold year-round. Organic. Instagrammable.

Then I woke up. No cows. No silos. Just my dying phone and that same mosquito, judging me. But the dream lingered because this wasn’t fantasy. It was a blueprint waiting to happen. Rwanda has all the pieces, available land, ready farmers, a financing framework that can be structured through BRD, and all the necessary technology from drones to mobile money.

The missing piece? A Halisi-like entity to connect the dots. Providing professional management for smallholder farms, guaranteeing markets for produce, and offering integrated training so farmers truly understand their businesses.

I rebuked the mosquito that was judging me, I shouted at it, go away, nothing is stopping us.

So, here’s my challenge. Someone, government, investor, mad genius, please steal this idea. Do it before I fall asleep again. Because next time, I don’t want to just dream about it. I want to wake up in Nyagatare, open my window, and hear a cow say, “Thanks, boss.”

That’s how we’ll know we’ve truly transformed agriculture from subsistence to success. When our farmers aren’t just surviving, but thriving; when our rural areas aren’t just productive, but prosperous; when our national dreams aren’t just visions, but realities we can all touch, measure, and bank. Literally.

The writer is a Project Development and Financing Strategist

This article, first published on June 24, has been adapted from www.newtimes.co.rw.