Two women in traditional dress pause at the crest of a hill to rest, one carrying her walking stick, the other with basket of goods. In the background we see the rolling landscape of the country aptly named “The Land of a Thousand Hills” dotted with traditional circular thatched homes and delineated by field after field of food crops.
Sorghum is one of Rwanda’s most important cereal grains and a good source of income for farmers. Other important crops are plantains, sweet potatoes, cassava, potatoes, beans, corn, and sugar. Coffee and tea are principal exports, as are quinine and pyrethrum. In recent years, wheat has become an increasingly important crop for Rwanda.
Rwanda’s soil is fertile but rocky and sloping, and the land is tilled entirely by hand with no animals used to pull plows and no machinery.